


Full Fathom Five

by dtkrushnics



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M, Minor Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Minor Character Death, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 02:21:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dtkrushnics/pseuds/dtkrushnics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one was expecting the end of the world, but so it goes. A mind-eating parasite causing delirium and suicide. A tiny, ragtag group of survivors. The Winchesters & Co., left stranded in the depths of the rural southeast, a town made disease-resistant by the angels – that is, before they turned tail and fled to their castle in the clouds. They built up their defenses, gathered supplies, and managed to construct a small, organized community. But the one thing they were never counting on was the one angel they had left falling victim to the savage disease. With Castiel on the brink of self-annihilation, Dean dares to venture a voyage inside his head, inside the dimension of fear and blood and insanity that Castiel has created. And perhaps, the perilous journey through oceans of madness and tribulation will reveal more than the two could have ever imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

 

_“Facilis decensus averni.”_

_Easy is the descent to Hell._

  
_– Virgil,_ “The Aeneid”

_Dean_

Silence.

            Concentrated, suffocating silence.

            A man in a bar, nursing his third beer. Outside, the hurricane of death and destruction rages on. _Plague._ The word drips with sickly corruption. He tries it out on his tongue. It turns to metal in his mouth. The taste of it blackens his throat. He imagines the air, heavy with fatality, pressing down on him from all sides. His nails scratch at the label on the bottle until it disintegrates in his hands. The alcohol is sour and as tepid as dirty bathwater. He drinks it anyway. The building stinks of blood, urine, evil, and a fear so dark it has become as much a part of it as the wood and nails.

            The door’s creaky hinges sound like a scream as it swings open. The newcomer’s light tread echoes faintly on rotten floorboards. With a death rattle like the last bitter cough of a dying man, the lights flare to life and cast dancing shadows on the man’s face. He looks up from the rim of his bottle, greeting the intruder with a wry, twisted grin.

            “Stuck in an old bar in the sorry-ass town of Centreville, Alabama.” He gives a strangled laugh. “Damn good way to go, eh?”

            “This seems like a terrible way to die, Dean.”

            Dean Winchester barks a second laugh at the genuine note of bemusement in Castiel’s voice. “Joke, Cas. End of the world, and you still don’t – never mind.” He slides over in the booth and pats the seat by his side. “What’s up?”

            Castiel sighs, scratches his head, and settles in neatly and cat-like next to Dean. Without asking permission, he snatches the bottle from Dean’s lips and takes a gentle taste. The acidity of it must affect him more than it does Dean, for he wrinkles his nose and sets it back down disdainfully. “Where are Sam and Lucy?”

            “Patrol.” Dean welcomes the warm liquor into his stomach. “Someone’s gotta scavenge the dead bodies out there.”

            “So why aren’t you?” Castiel’s face is open, arranged in polite curiosity. It’s an innocent question, but Dean feels it like a punch to the gut. He mulls it over, wondering how to respond.

            _I’m tired, Cas. I’m so damn tired. I’m tired of the smell, I’m tired of having to go out and scrape corpses together, I’m tired of trying to save a world that’s getting smaller every second. I’m tired of putting on a brave face for the soldiers that are too young to have seen so much._

It’s only been months since the world ended, but the weariness on Dean’s face suggests decades.

            The fear is the worst: a constant, prickling fear that has welded itself to Dean’s chest, because _plague_ means _super-friggin’-highly-contagious_ , and their only protection against it is an invisible quarantine bubble created by an angel with questionable ability. The motel where they sleep and everything in a quarter-mile radius. Everything else spells near-certain death. Every day, they find more bodies. Mourn more bodies. Burn more bodies. And thinking about those bodies being Sam or Castiel puts Dean in a panic that he can’t escape.

            Not that he would ever tell Castiel that.

            “Ah, wanted to do inventory.”

            Castiel purses his lips, something like concerned amusement in his eyes. More concern, less amusement. “Of the alcohol?” he murmurs gently.

            Dean cringes inwardly, grinding his teeth together. Outwardly, he plasters on a smug little smirk and answers breezily, “Yep. Care to join me?”

            The angel frowns at him. Or rather, half-angel. When the angels fled the Earth after the plague was unleashed, Castiel’s powers had been severely drained. He’d been cut off. Add that onto the strain of creating and maintaining the quarantine, and his level of angelicy is notably less than ideal.

            “Dean – ”

            “No, Cas. Not now. Shut up and drink.” Dean pushes the bottle at Castiel, ignoring the fact that half of it sloshes over onto his hand from the force of his shove.

            Castiel takes the hand instead of the bottle. Dean flinches imperceptibly, nearly jerking his hand back, but Castiel matches his startled stare with such steadiness and reassurance that Dean is too shocked to move.

            “You don’t have to go it alone, Dean,” Castiel tells him softly.

Dean exhales quietly and gently pries Castiel’s fingers from his. He takes a stomach-turning swig from the bottle and slams it down before releasing a defiant, “Yes I do.”

Before Castiel can even open his mouth to respond, the door shudders open once more and Sam walks in.

ﭷ

            He’s followed by Lucy Reeves, a survivor they’d picked up upon their arrival in town. She’d lost her parents and both her brothers to the plague. Fresh out of high school, and she was making weapons for the patrols.

            The weapons were a failsafe. Find a victim that’s too far gone to save, shoot ‘em dead. The trouble is, when is it mercy and when is it murder?

            Suicide is tricky that way.

            _Suicide._ Twice as scary as and ten times harder to battle than any homicidal rage virus. Dean sometimes finds himself longing for the Croatoan. At least that way he could put himself in an _eat-or-be-eaten_ mindset, but now – well, now, it’s just a race against fate to see if they can stop people from killing themselves.

            Lucy slides into their booth, her red hair a mess and a smudge of dirt on her cheek. Dean can smell the reek of death on her clothes from where he sits. She dimples a tired smile at Castiel – they have become extremely close friends in the past months – and turns, business-like, to Dean. “Eleven new ones,” she reports. “We burned the bodies and buried the ashes, just like you asked.”

            Dean can see past the tough girl act. There is fear and exhaustion in her eyes. The same fear and exhaustion he sees in the mirror every morning. He tries to tame the simmering anger in his stomach. _She’s so young,_ he thinks. He understands the burden perfectly. _Too young for this life._

“Thanks, Luce,” he tells her. “I’ll go out tomorrow with a patrol and search the downtown.”

            The girl nods and rises. She leaves the bar without looking back, unaware of the three pairs of eyes following her movement. Castiel looks at Dean with a narrowed, protective glint in his eye. “She doesn’t deserve this pain,” he declares, echoing Dean’s previous thoughts. “I should take her somewhere she’ll be safe.”

            “You’re not strong enough, Cas,” Dean answers, talking to his bottle. “We’ve gone over this. We can protect her. This is the best place for her.”

            “Dean’s right, Cas,” Sam contributes at last, taking Lucy’s seat in the booth. “You know that.”

            They wallow in silence for a few seconds before Castiel, sounding distinctly disgruntled, asks Sam to further the patrol’s report.

            “Well, it’s like Lucy said,” Sam begins. “We found eleven new bodies off Powell Street, to the west.

            Dean rubs his eyes, feeling a prickling in the back of them that he neither knows how to nor wants to explain. “Alright, so a dozen new stinkers and, what? You didn’t find any survivors?”

            Sam averts his gaze, answering with a jerky shake of the head. “Dean, we haven’t found any in weeks. You know, maybe it’s possible…”

            “That we’re the only ones left? No, that can’t be right. There’s like, twenty of us, tops.”

            His brother and Castiel exchange an uncomfortable look that sparks a flash of anger in Dean’s stomach. “Hey, I’m not crazy, okay? There’s gotta be more out there. We just have to find them.”

            Castiel’s hand finds Dean’s again, his fingers resting just lightly enough to send a warm buzz through Dean’s nerves. But this time, the hunter wants nothing to do with the angel’s false reassurances. He sweeps out of the booth, yanking his jacket on with fierce vigor.

            “I’m checking the downtown tomorrow, like I said. Cas, you’re coming with. Tell Lucy she’s on. Get Jack and Tristan, too.” Without waiting for a reply, he grabs a fourth bottle of beer and heads to his room.

ﭷ

            Across the street from the bar is a motel, where their little group sleeps and keeps their things. Dean makes his way to the room he has claimed as his own and throws himself down on the bed.

            He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t think he could’ve cried if he wanted to. He’s just so spent that tears no longer come.

            Instead, he turns on his side and stares at the door. Not that he’s expecting anyone to come in – they have long since learned not to bother him when he’s in one of these moods – he simply wonders if one of these days the door will remain unopened. The closet emptied. The bed carefully made and stripped of any trace of Dean Winchester.

            The thought isn’t nearly as terrifying as it would’ve been years ago.

            His fingers strangle the pillow by his side, nails digging into the fabric like claws. There’s a pressure building at the back of his head, a pain he knows is the beginning of a migraine but imagines is a bullet, tearing through his skull to lessen his suffering.

            Dean smiles.

            He sometimes thinks about the times he’s considered taking his own life, before the plague and before he saw the effects of suicide. He’d struggled with self-loathing and internal devastation for most of his life, and even though he’s told Sam he’d never do such a thing, there are times when he catches himself looking at a weapon in their arsenal and pictures using it to end his life. Or maybe, during a fight with a demon, just _happen_ to let his guard slip a little and –

            But no. Dean pinches his wrist, hard, and lets the bite of pain draw him back to reality. He couldn’t leave Sam. He couldn’t leave Castiel.

            There are so little of them left.

            A soft rustle of feathers interrupts his thoughts and makes his eyes spring open.

            “Cas, what the hell are you doing here? You know I –”

            “Yes, four hours, I remember. Dean, we need to talk.”

            Dean stares at the angel that is now standing at the foot of his bed, with his stupid trench coat and his stupid blue eyes. “What could you possibly want to talk to me about right now?”

            Castiel’s lips tighten and he turns his head to gaze at the door.

            “Dean, I know you feel responsible for the deaths –”

            “God, Cas, would you stop? I’m fine. I just – needed some time to think, that’s all.”

            In the time it takes to blink, Castiel moves to within inches of Dean’s face. It takes all of his self-control not to jump and scream at the sudden and unexpected invasion of personal space.

            “When I pulled you from Hell, I burned my mark on your soul.” Castiel whispers, and the image of the raised handprint on Dean’s shoulder blossoms in his mind’s eye. “That sort of bond is unusual and intimate and allows me to sense things about you, so do not tell me that you are _fine_ , Dean Winchester, because I feel your soul and you are very much _not fine._ ”

             Dean swallows down the fear that rises inside him. There’s pure _power_ resonating in Castiel’s blue eyes, power that he hasn’t sensed in a very long time. He tells himself that this is his friend, there’s nothing to be afraid of, and moves forward until the two are nose to nose.

            “I don’t get to be ‘not fine’, okay?” he snarls. “I got Sam and you and a dozen others to take care of. I don’t get to sit down and play show-and-tell with all the damn problems I got holed up in my head. We got bigger things to deal with. Who the hell cares? Who gives a damn if I can’t sleep thinking about the possibility of losing the last two people I can afford to care about?” The words come hurtling out before he can stop them, although he manages to catch himself before mentioning his suicidal tendencies. _That’s_ a box he doesn’t want Castiel opening.

            There’s a shift in the intensity behind the angel’s eyes – they seem to both darken and grow softer all at once. He rocks back on his heels, his lips a white line. “ _That’s_ what you’re worried about? That Sam and I are going to catch this disease and kill ourselves and leave you all alone?”

            “Well, why not?” Pure fury is coursing through Dean’s veins, inexplicable anger so strong he’s not even sure at whom it's directed. On a whim, he surges forward off the bed and shoves Castiel, hard. “I’ve lost everyone else, haven’t I? What’s another nightmare to keep me up? What’s another goddamn grave to dig?”

            Castiel lets himself be shoved, but as soon as Dean stops talking, he steps forward again. “Dean, I understand that you are in pain. I don’t blame you. You have strength beyond compare, but –”

            “No, Cas, you don’t understand. I –”

            “ _But_ you have your limits. You can’t take the weight of everything that has happened to you on your shoulders. It will destroy you. You don’t need to worry about Sam and me. We’ll be fine. Take care of _yourself_. You become reckless when it comes to defending your brother.”

            Dean is shaking, and it scares him that he can’t get it under control. He can feel his upper lip twitching in a grimace. “I’ve been looking after the kid since I was four years old, Cas.”

            “I know, Dean.” Castiel answers, his voice gentle. “I know.” Before Dean can respond, there’s another quiet rustle of feathers and the angel is gone, leaving Dean with a throat hoarse from shouting and tight with unshed tears.

            The hunter sighs into his hands. _I’m never going to get used to that damn angel,_ he thinks, and it’s the last thing that crosses his mind before exhaustion racks his body and he falls asleep.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

            Castiel loves to travel.

            He loves observing humans. Perfectly normal humans living perfectly normal lives. They are something so beautiful, so exquisite to behold, and Castiel loves every minute of it.

            The angel has flown to Paris this time, in search of isolation from Dean and the other hunters. He still has enough of his power left to make the occasional solo trip far, far away, and although the guilt at leaving the others all alone or not having the strength to bring them to safety with him wrecks him, he needs an escape once in a while. The city is under heavy quarantine. Inside the plastic walls, the air is sterile and life for the citizens can continue as normal as they can make it. Outside of them, the air is rank with the scent of death.

            Despite this, Paris is a beautiful city, especially lit up at night. Castiel stands in front of the Louvre now, absorbing the brilliant lightshow of the glass pyramids, their reflections dancing on tiptoes across still waters. He’s aching to go inside the museum, to let his eyes hungrily take in the exquisite works of art housed there, but he stops himself. Instead he chooses to seat himself along the pool, letting the soft murmur of the fountains calm his racing heart.

 _Dean’s worried about him._ And because of his worry, Dean can’t sleep, he’s acting twitchy, and his soul is tired. The unexpected surge of blame Castiel places on himself almost drowns him. Then there’s anger – because Castiel can take care of himself, he doesn’t need a hunter waiting on him and he certainly doesn’t need his _concern._

            Castiel clenches his fists, digging his nails so tightly into his palms he’s afraid he’s drawn blood. _Stop thinking like that,_ he tells himself, and a snide little voice answers, _Like what?_

_Stop thinking like an angel._

            The thought makes Castiel feel very cold, though the night is warm. It’s true; he isn’t much of an angel these days. What kind of angel can’t even properly protect a group of people from a virus? A cherub could learn to do that in a week.

            Before he’d met Dean Winchester, Castiel had been a soldier. As obedient to his father as a servant would be. He’d loved the humans, as his father had commanded him to, but didn’t quite understand them. They felt so much, but gained so little from their displays of emotion that it made the angel wonder what the use of such sentiment was if being submissive and respectful earned you all that could possibly please you.

            It was Dean that had opened his eyes to the wonders emotion could bring – that not everything had to be pain and guilt, that there could be happiness, laughter, and friendship. The Winchesters taught him that there was more depth to humankind than Castiel had ever imagined. He’d been stationed on Earth for millennia, observing, but now he truly _sees._

            And what he sees is beautiful.

            He won’t pretend the thought of falling has never occurred to him. Of course it has. He often wonders what it would be like to become human, to be mortal, and to sever his ties to Heaven once and for all. Anna had seemed to enjoy it.

            But then he shakes his head, reminds himself that the Winchesters need him as an angel (“baby in a trench coat”, Dean had said) and goes on with his grace still intact.

            Is that all they need him for?

            Castiel drops his head, picking at his nails, a habit left over from Jimmy’s time in this body. Sometimes he thinks the brothers keep him around just because he’s useful – because he’s the only angel stupid enough to serve mortals.

            But _don’t make me lose you too_ , and _I need you_ , and _you are like a brother to me_. Could it be - Castiel clutches at his temples, biting his tongue hard to distract him from the sudden onslaught of emotions. The memories strike him hard as a wrecking ball.

            His hands are trembling. Castiel is – was – a soldier. A seraph, placed on Earth to observe and guard, but never to interfere. Never to emote, never to interact. In all his existence, Castiel has never before made an impact on a human’s life.

            Or, for that matter, let a human make such an impact on his.

ﭷ

            When he returns, Lucy is waiting for him in the lobby. She has long known about his occasional escapades, but it doesn’t make the stab of guilt any less painful when he catches sight of her.

            “Lucy, I’m – ”

            “Cas, I swear to God, if you say ‘I’m sorry’ one more time, I’ll beat ya bloody.”

            There’s a moment of tense silence until Castiel realizes she’s joking, and allows a small, shy smile to grace his countenance.

            “Where’d ya go this time?” Lucy asks him, and she pats the chair next to her.

            Castiel seats himself, pausing as he deliberates what to say. “Paris,” he says at last. “It’s always been a favorite city of mine. So much history. So much feeling.” He chuckles as if sharing an inside joke with himself. “It’s often been said that Paris is the city of romance, but I believe ‘passion’ is the more appropriate word. There isn’t a place you turn where there isn’t anger being shown, or love being shared, or wonder being discovered. There’s just…” He fumbles, searching for the right words.

            “So much,” Lucy finishes for him, her voice soft. “There’s just so much.”

            “Yes.”

            “I’ve always wanted to see Paris. But I’ve never even been outside ‘a Alabama. I don’t think I’d do too good in such a big city.” The wistfulness in Lucy’s tone tugs at Castiel’s heartstrings. “Hey, Cas? If… if we ever get outta this cock-crazy mess, can you take me to see Paris? Just for a day?”

            Castiel smiles at her. “Luciana Reeves, _when_ we get through this, I promise to take you wherever you want.”

            Lucy throws her arms around his neck, letting out a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob. In the heartbeat of surprise, Castiel warms at the memory of shared happiness and shared stories with a sister; of lounging and taking a moment to relax though they were supposed to be on vigil; of an elder brother who appears and begins to speak disapprovingly only to finish in peals of ringing laughter as the three exchange the brightness in their souls as angels do.

            “Sometimes I think losin’ my family wasn’t so bad, if it means I got to be your friend, Cassie.”

            Castiel draws away, meeting her tearful gaze levelly with an earnest expression.

            “If I could give you back your family, I would,” he whispers somberly.

            “I know. But hey, with you as my brother, it kinda makes it all okay. Or, y’know, better. Somehow. You remind me of the brothers I usedta have.”

            Castiel grimaces. “They must not have been very fun brothers.”

            “Hey!” Lucy laughs, dimpling at him and punching him solidly in the arm. “Don’t talk like that. I happen to think you’re the funnest ball o’ feathers I’ve ever met.”

            “‘Funnest’ isn’t a word, Lucy.”

            “Okay, so maybe you’re not _that_ fun.”


	2. Chapter Two

_That is the path of wickedness,_

_Tho some call it the road to Heaven._

_– Anonymous,_ “Thomas the Rhymer”

_Dean_

            In the dream, there is no sound. Dark clouds swirl overhead, but there is no sound. Flashes of lightning break the gloom like a charge – one, two, _three_ – but there is no sound. The silence is overpowering, like the whole world is holding its breath. And then Dean watches as a fierce wave of bruising light spreads across the sky, followed seconds later by a violent force that knocks him to the ground like the punch of an invisible giant.

            The air swirls with smoke and ash. Dean shields his eyes, walking carefully out from behind the trees. He can barely see, and in his confusion he trips and falls onto a body whose bones shatter into dust as if it’d been hollowed out. Bloody tears scar the corpse’s shriveled cheeks, dripping from empty eyes. Dean tries to yell, but there is no sound. Bodies are strewn across the scorched ground like trampled wildflowers. A movement up ahead catches his attention, and there stands Castiel, arms raised to the sky. A flicker of grace and shadow, and Dean realizes his wings are manifesting, sprouting sinew and feathers layer by layer.

            Castiel lowers his head, meeting Dean’s stare with those luminescent blue eyes. And very abruptly, the feathers begin to fall off his wings. The small, downy feathers go first, without much resistance. But as time stretches on, flesh and blood soon follow the feathers onto the ground. They stain the grass and drip onto Castiel’s coat in inhuman quantities. Castiel falls to his knees, red rivets trickling from his mouth, wings torn to shreds, bits and pieces scattered around him. For one bizarre moment, Dean is reminded of the time they were hunting in the forest, and he and Sam had stumbled upon a pack of coyotes fighting over a bloodied pigeon.

            The angel opens his mouth as if to speak, but instead, there comes a blinding glow. It seems to come from within Castiel, lighting him up all over, but far from pure. In fact, it looks as though it’s ripping him apart. Dean steps forward, panic gripping his heart, wanting, _needing_ to help, but it’s far too late. There comes another radiant flash, and Castiel’s bright eyes dull, and Dean opens his mouth and screams, and suddenly there is sound.

ﭷ

            Dean lurches out of bed, his lips forming Castiel’s name. He can feel the light sheen of sweat on him, his face damp where tears had leaked during the dream. He struggles to calm his breathing, pulling his knees up to his chest and placing his head between them to get rid of the dizziness that’s threatening to empty his stomach.

            He waits until his breathing slows and the blood stops pounding in his ears before lifting his head, groaning when he realizes it’s still dark out. But he knows he won’t be able to go back to sleep, so instead he washes off and pulls on a clean shirt and jeans. He walks out of the motel room and down the narrow hallway, his feet unconsciously leading him to Castiel’s room. _I just need to make sure he’s okay._ The words spin in loops through his brain, like a fly unwilling to leave him alone.

            “Cas?” he murmurs, knocking on the door once before turning the knob and entering. Immediately, a chill passes through him as he takes in the empty room. He stands there for several seconds, trying to ignore the fact that he’s trembling but feeling completely paralyzed.

            “Dean?” The gruff voice comes from behind him, and Dean turns around so fast that his vision swims. Castiel stands there, looking perfectly healthy, albeit a bit confused by Dean’s presence in his room, and the relief that slams into Dean’s stomach nearly knocks him off-balance.

            “Oh, Cas, good, I, uh – I just thought – um –” Dean bites his lip. _Smooth_ , he thinks condescendingly. “Um, never mind. I’ll just go.”

            “Dean, what’s the matter?” Castiel takes a step forward, tilting his head in a puppy-like way that rivals even Sam. “It’s very early.”

            “Yeah, I couldn’t sleep. Just thought, since, y’know, you don’t sleep and all, that you’d be, uh – nothing. I’ll get outta your hair.”

            “I do.”

            Dean stops his sputtering and squints at Castiel, sure he’s missed a part of the conversation. “You do what?”

            “Sleep. My vessel requires it now that I’ve been cut off from Heaven for so long, I…” Castiel’s trying hard to keep his voice steady, but Dean can see the pain in his eyes. “It is difficult.”

            “You sleep? Well then, uh, what are you doing up?”

            “I couldn’t. Like you, sleep would not come when I needed it.”

            “Oh.” There’s a few seconds of awkward silence. “Do you wanna, uh, talk about it?”

            “Talk about what?”

            “Heaven. Uh.” Dean points to the ceiling. “Upstairs. The angel office building in the sky.”

            Castiel raises his eyebrows, clearly surprised. “What is there to talk about?”

            Dean shrugs, uncomfortable, wishing he hadn’t opened his mouth at all. “I dunno. You seem kinda out of it, I guess. Ever since the God Squad turned their wings on you, you’ve been actin’ sketchy.”

            “We _are_ in the middle of a life-or-death situation, Dean.” Castiel remarks scathingly, but sits down on his bed anyway. He feigns sudden interest in his hands. “I can’t hear them anymore.”

            “Hear who?” Dean asks, and immediately realizes it’s a ridiculous question. “Oh. The angels. Radio’s off? Is it you or them?”

            Castiel bites his lip, and his expression is the most human and most wretched it’s ever looked. “It’s me. I’m not an angel anymore. At least, not how I used to be. The Host has cut me off.”

            Dean sits in the armchair, leaning back into the cushion with a pinprick of annoyance. “Well, that’s just stupid. And, you know what, so are they.”

            Castiel looks scandalized. “They’re still my family, Dean, just as much as you are. I’ve been through much with them. Millennia spent by their side, watching when you humans were just beginning to walk upright. I observed mountains form and seas fill and civilizations arise. I stood in the room while Leonardo da Vinci first sketched _Mona Lisa_. I – ”

            “Yeah, yeah, Cas. You’re old. I get it.” Dean laughs, but coughs to a stop at the look on Castiel’s face. “Alright. Sorry. It’s all very fascinating. You’ve never told us much about the world… y’know, _before._ ”

            “I never believed you would enjoy or care to listen to what I would say about it. Sam seems to be the one who would be more interested in my stories. You’re not very religious, even now, so I doubt they would intrigue you.”

            Dean leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and doing his best to look captivated. “Nah, come on. Try me. Tell me the story of Castiel.”

            Castiel begins with his birth, when he opened his eyes to a world of blinding light and grace. He speaks of his brothers and sisters and the world they were assigned to protect and observe. He tells of his watching as the Earth turned from black to gray to green and blue. He speaks of “ _big plans for that fish, Castiel_ ” and the journey of his Father’s creations. He explains his curiosity of the humans’ expansion, their languages, their cultures, how they could all look the same and yet be so different. He tells of woven galaxies and maelstroms of stardust. He tells of wonder and warmth.

            And in the end, he tells of how, once upon a time, he gripped his hand around the shoulder of a broken body and pulled the Righteous Man out of Hell’s fiery talons, and how within that Righteous Man, Castiel the angel found a home.

ﭷ

            There’s a knock on Castiel’s door at precisely eight in the morning, startling Dean out of sleep. Glancing over at the bed, he notices with a small smirk that Castiel lies on his stomach, dead to the world. It gives him a strange twist in his chest to see the angel actually asleep. He rubs the drowsiness out of his eyes and stumbles over to the door, pulling it open to spot a shock of red hair. Lucy’s standing on the other side, eyes glued to her clipboard, writing furiously.

            “Hey, Cas, we’ve got the patrol for downtown all ready in the lobby, Dean didn’t answer his door but I thought maybe you could –” Her eyes flick up for half a second, and she stops talking abruptly when she realizes who she’s speaking to. “Dean! Um, I was just – well – um, what are you doing in Cas’ room?”

            Dean doesn’t answer for a few seconds, his head still light with sleep, but when he registers the light blush coloring Lucy’s pale cheeks and the fact that he had, in fact, spent the night in Castiel’s room, his eyes widen and he struggles to redeem himself.

            “Oh, it’s not – ! I couldn’t sleep last night, um, bad dream, and I came here to see if Cas could do his little –” He waves his hands vaguely. “And help me get back to sleep but uh, we just got to talking and must’ve fallen asleep or something.”

            Lucy stares at him, her lips twitching like she’s halfway between a smirk and an embarrassed smile, and Dean grimaces.

            “You don’t believe me. I do tell the truth sometimes, you know.”

Lucy opens her mouth to say something snide, giggling a little bit, but Dean cuts her off. “Look, I’ll – I’ll go wake him up. Just, don’t mention anything to Sam, okay?”

The girl salutes him and marches off, and with a heavy sigh Dean turns around and goes to stand beside the bed. “Cas. Hey, Cas. Wake up. Wake –”

Castiel shoots up like a pistol, grabbing Dean’s wrist and twisting him around before the hunter can let out a noise of protest. “Cas, it’s me, damn it!”

            The angel lets him go, and Dean whips back around to face Castiel’s wide and frightened blue eyes, fuming. “I apologize. I’m not accustomed to this.” He gets up and dusts himself and his dirty, wrinkled trench coat off.

            “Okay, whatever. It’s time for the patrol. Man, you gotta change into something else. That damn trench coat’s only gonna slow you down.”

            “Technically it’s an overcoat.”

            “It could be a prom dress for all I care; you’re still leaving the thing here. So get ready and meet us in the lobby.”

            Dean jogs down the hall to his own room, where he splashes some water in his face, tidies his bedhead as best he can, and slips into a warm t-shirt under his worn leather jacket. When he finally makes his way into the lobby, the other three members of the patrol are already there. Lucy’s tying up her combat boots, briefing Sam, who sits with the map spread out on the coffee table, on their route.

            Jack is, like Lucy, a Centreville survivor. He’s seen the effects of the virus first-hand, when his girlfriend caught it and hung herself in their shower. He’s amiable enough, and handy with a rifle, so Dean had taken him under his wing.

            Tristan is another story; he’s twitchy and quiet, probably some side effect from PTSD. He stands in the corner of the lobby, half in shadow, his handgun hanging loosely in his fingers. His eyes are barely visible beneath his shaggy mane of hair, and his bitten-till-they-bleed nails scratch absently at his skin, as though there are cockroaches crawling all over them. Dean glances over at him, and then drops his gaze. Tristan makes him nervous, but he’d be the last to admit it.

            Sam stands, leaving Lucy with the map, and turns to face Dean. He holds out a hand, his face carefully arranged in tight resignation, and Dean grasps it.

            “Good luck out there.” Sam near-whispers, knowing all too well the dangers of tiptoeing the line between safety and suicide.

            “Yeah,” Dean grunts, not one for lengthy goodbyes. “Keep an eye out for me till I get back.”

            Sam nods, tries a half-grimacing smile, and lets go of Dean’s hand. Neither of them is comfortable with public farewells, but they never leave without saying something to each other, at least. Just in case. Dean’s heart sinks to his stomach as Sam runs a hand through his hair, gives Lucy a quick hug, and runs out without saying another word. Leaving Sam is never an easy thing for him to do.

            They pass the next few minutes in silence, waiting for Castiel. When he comes downstairs, they waste no time in getting ready. They put on their uniforms quickly and efficiently, protecting themselves from the elements with army-like combat attire, gloves, and knee-high boots. When they’re done, they bunch near the door, nod to each other, and put on their gas masks. Their acquired technician, Tyler, had fixed up the masks so they could communicate through a series of microphones and receivers under the material. It allows them to give messages without exposing themselves to the airborne virus that had already killed so many of their kind.

            The sun is making its slow ascent in the sky when they finally make their way outside. If you were to look at the sky, you could almost believe nothing had changed. It’s still home to delicate white clouds and the brilliant yellow of the sun, and they continue on their set paths blissfully unaware of the tragedy occurring below them.

            Dean curses the sky, for it reminds him of Heaven, and of the angels’ decision to remain there instead of helping the humans. Castiel is the only angel he holds any amount of love for, and he’s passably human anyway. He isn’t what they need. He can’t help them.

            ﭷ

_Castiel_

It’s usually Sam and Dean that go on the patrols; Castiel is hardly ever asked to go. He doesn’t know whether to feel relief or disappointment at that, so instead he feels both – relief that he’s spared bearing witness to the plague, disappointment that it seems as though the Winchesters don’t think he’s capable of fending for himself.

            Castiel shifts in his uniform, yearning to itch at the uncomfortable fabric, but his fingers are useless and blunted by the gloves. He feels _wrong_ in the uniform, the way he had when he first inhabited Jimmy and felt as though he wore the body like an oversized coat instead of as if it were his. Of course, now it _is_ his; Jimmy had left this vessel long ago, the first time Castiel died and was brought back to life by his Father.

            Castiel hopes his Heaven is a happy one.

            A buzzing in his ear catches his attention, alerting him to the fact that one of his patrol mates is trying to talk to him.

            _“Hey, are we checking all the houses on St. George Street?”_ Jack.

            _“This is why I mark routes, Jacky. Is it too much to ask ya to pay attention in class?”_ Lucy, teasing.

            _“I apologize, Miss, but I still need an answer. Preferably not a sarcastic one.”_

_”Sarcastic is my middle name.”_

_“I thought it was Huge Pain In Jack’s A –”_

_“Hey! Cut it out.”_ Dean, his voice angry and demanding. _“Friggin’ children.”_

            _“Sir, yes, sir!”_ Jack, laughter in his tone.

 _“I am_ this _close to kicking you where the sun don’t shine.”_

_“Seattle?”_

Castiel turns around at the sound of a light scuffle. Dean is holding Jack in a headlock, though even from a distance and through the goggles, Castiel can see that his eyes are crinkled in a grin. The younger man is struggling, attempting to speak through his laughter.

            _“Whistle. Whistle and I’ll let you go.”_

Lucy’s giggles get even louder when Jack, breathless and gasping, tries to whistle and ends up laughing and sputtering instead. Dean relents and lets him go, making a big show of wiping his hands and dusting himself off like it was nothing. He even bows to Lucy and winks at Castiel.

            _“Guys.”_ Tristan’s quiet voice almost goes unheard.

            The laughter dies down when they spot the last member of the patrol, standing in the open door of a nearby house. They walk slowly, Castiel’s heart thudding against his better judgment, to join Tristan. They peer inside.

            The first one they see is the man. He’s badly decayed, they all are. The flesh he has left is bloated and faintly blue. He’s hanging from the living room curtain rod, TV cables wrapped around his neck. The blood staining them has turned rust brown. The woman is on her side, resting on the couch, with her wrists slit open to the bone.

            And the worst – well, the worst is the child. It can’t be more than six or seven years old. It sits curled up next to its mother, its tiny, crumbling hand still hanging onto the handle of the knife that’s protruding out of its empty chest.

            Castiel feels the loss like a blow, rendering him breathless and paralyzed. He sees, he _sees_ the life they’d had, the life they could’ve had – the mother, _Amy, her name was Amy_ , had loved to bake and the child, _Alison, Alison Marie, oh, Alison Marie, the life you could have had_ , the child always knew where her mother hid the cookies and took them without asking and her mother pretended not to know, and the father, _Zachary Schroder, they were the Schroders,_ would often come home from work early and surprise his wife and daughter and at night, at night they would all pile into bed and let Alison pick a movie and when she’d fall asleep while watching it, as she always did, Zachary would carry her to her room and call her his princess. Amy would kiss her on the forehead and whisper _dream sweetly_ and the parents would smile at each other and smile at their daughter and smile at the life and the love that they had.

            The angel reels back from the memories, the memories that aren’t his – just an imprint left in the house from the souls that Death had reaped. He shakes his head to clear it, blinking back the wetness in his eyes, and turns to look at his team. Dean has gone pale, but his steady breathing whispers through the speakers in Castiel’s mask. Jack is nowhere to be seen; he had probably gone outside to avoid the sight of the dead bodies. Tristan, it seems, had gone with him.

            And Lucy.

            Her name rips its way out of Castiel’s throat before he can swallow the sound.

            She’s kneeling on the carpet of the living room, her shoulders shaking and stomach heaving. Her mask lays forgotten next to her feet. She’d thrown it off to retch, at the sight, at the smell, it doesn’t matter. She isn’t wearing her mask.

            “Lucy!” Castiel shouts again, willing his legs to move, to run, and suddenly he’s next to her without any memory of having actually budged.

            Castiel hears Dean’s broken _“Oh, God”_ in his ear as the other man drops down next to him. He yanks Lucy back, and with shaking hands, Castiel tries to put the mask back on her face, but Lucy is thrashing around too much, and Dean has to help him.

            “We have to go.” Castiel says, and his voice sounds very far away. “We have to save her.”

            Dean nods and picks Lucy up in a bridal style kind of carry. Her head lolls back, her eyes half-lidded, and Castiel has been shot and stabbed before but it hadn’t hurt half as much as this does.

            Castiel is outside. How did he get outside? Dean is in front of him, shouting at Jack and Tristan. Dean is jogging. They are all jogging. Castiel looks over his shoulder and finds he can no longer see the Shroders’ house. How have they traveled so far already?

            Dean is kicking open the door to the motel, taking Lucy to her room. Lucy has not woken up.

            _Lucy, Luciana Reeves, oh, Luciana Reeves, the life you could have had._


	3. Chapter Three

_I hear it now, and o’er and o’er,_

_Eternal greetings to the dead;_

_And “Ave, Ave, Ave,” said,_

_“Adieu, adieu,” for evermore._

_– Alfred Lord Tennyson,_ “In Memoriam A.H.H.”

_Dean_

If Dean were to be honest with himself, the look on Castiel’s face scares him almost as much as Lucy’s unresponsive body does.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel watches as Dean places Lucy gently on her bed. Her red hair fans out around her, and Castiel cannot help but imagine that it’s blood. There’s a low keening sound, and it takes him several fluttering heartbeats to realize it’s him.

            Dean looks up at him, an indiscernible emotion dancing in his green eyes.

            “Cas, go sleep or something. You don’t need to be here for this.”

            Castiel’s answer is immediate and abrupt. “Yes. I do. I’m staying here. I’m watching over her.”

            Dean’s face tightens and his eyes wrinkle in a way that Castiel recognizes as pain.

            “Fine. You can stay. But get Sam. He knows more about this virus than I do.”

            Castiel chews at the inside of his cheek, half-wondering whether Dean will lock the door behind him as soon as Castiel leaves. But Dean is right; Sam has done all kinds of research on the plague, and maybe he can help.

            Sam is in his room, reading one of Bobby’s old books, when Castiel enters his room. Without knocking, because there’s no time to waste.

            “Cas? What’s –”

            “Lucy’s down.”

            Sam is immediately up on his feet, his eyes narrowing in worry as he sweeps out of the room with Castiel right on his tail and a ringing in his ears he can’t wish away.

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean’s throat tightens painfully every time he looks at Lucy, but he can’t bring himself to tear his gaze away. He thinks of her bright smile, of the mischievously playful glint in her eyes that warms him to the core. She’s a little sister to him, like Jo had been, and _great now he’s thinking about Jo_ , about how similar the two are and how he’d felt so helpless then and feels so helpless now.

            “Lucy, don’t go.” Dean can’t say the words above a whisper, even though he feels like screaming them at the top of his lungs. Screaming, and ripping the world apart to bring her home.

ﭷ

_Sam_

Sam knows many things.

            He knows that the Eisenhower interstate system required that one mile in every five must be straight, to be used as airstrips in times of war or other emergency. He knows that each of the suits on a deck of cards represent the four major pillars of the economy in the middle ages: hearts represents the Church, spades represents the military, clubs represents the agriculture, and diamonds represents the merchant class. He knows that the _Sports Illustrated_ Swimsuit Edition that generated the most letters was the 1978 issue, “The Beauties of Brazil,” which published Cheryl Tiegs’ infamous fishnet, see-through swimsuit. He also knows Dean used to keep a copy of that exact magazine under his bed when he was a teenager.

            And yet, faced with the comatose body of a teenage girl and the desperate faces of his brother and of his friend, he finds he knows nothing that matters.

            He doesn’t know how to save her.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

“Fix her.” Castiel hardly recognizes the low growl as himself, so shredded with pain and worry as it is. He glares at Sam, who’s looking more and more lost by the minute.

            “I can’t.”

            Castiel stands stock-still, feeling numb. Literally, numb. His entire body is buzzing as if stuck with pins and needles.

            “What do you mean, you _can’t_?” Dean rises to his feet, somehow managing to make his younger brother cower though the elder is several inches shorter. “All those books, all your little tests, and you got nothing? No. Don’t give me that. You fix her, Sam, or I swear to God –” Dean’s voice cracks on the last word. He pauses, swallowing visibly. “Just do it. Whatever it takes. I won’t let her die.”

            Sam runs a hand through his hair. _Mop_ , Castiel thinks dimly. _It looks like a mop._

            “Cas, you okay?” Dean’s voice breaks through the worst of Castiel’s disjointed thoughts.

            “I’m fine.” Castiel manages, marveling at how calm and level his voice sounds compared to the screeching in his mind. His eyes find Lucy again, and his vision swims without warning. “Fine.”

            Dean’s eyes flash, possibly remembering their conversation – argument, heated discussion, whatever – from the night before. He doesn’t say anything, however, and for that Castiel is glad. He doesn’t think he can handle another confrontation at this moment.

            Sam is sitting by Lucy, hesitance written all over his face. “Cas, are you sure she hasn’t contaminated the area?”

            It takes a while for it to get through Castiel’s muddled brain that Sam is talking to him. “Yes. The quarantine stands. You are all still protected, though she is,” he struggles for a moment to find the word. “Infected.”

            Seemingly satisfied with his answer, Sam turns back to Lucy. Castiel can practically hear him snapping his rubber gloves on. “Okay. Pulse weak, but stable. Slight fever, but that may just be from the nausea she experienced earlier. Lucy? Can you… can you hear me?” Sam waits, but there’s no response from the girl.

            “She’ll wake when she’s ready.” Castiel snaps, feeling the need to defend Lucy. The look on Sam’s face, the hopelessness and resignation, sparks a fire beneath Castiel and boils his blood.

            “I’m sure she will.” Sam agrees quietly, gently pulling open one of Lucy’s eyes and shining a small flashlight he’d brought tucked in his boot into the blue iris. “There’s pupil response, so she’s not completely –”

            Lucy jerks away from Sam, finally awake, and screams. And screams, and screams.

ﭷ

_Lucy_

no there’s no time left gotta run gotta go time to go you can’t stay here what’s happening?

            you can’t no mustn’t let them win mustn’t let them see it’s time to leave, lucy, it’s time to leave

            it’s time for you to go

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean jumps forward to restrain Lucy, ducking away from her seizing limbs. A bony wrist smacks him in the corner of the eye, leaving him disoriented.

            “Lucy! Lucy, listen to me, I – ow!” Sam’s words cut off into a yelp when Lucy knees him in the temple.

            Suddenly, Castiel is there, his fingertips glowing as if filled with heavenly light – which, Dean supposes, they are. He softly touches Lucy’s sweating forehead and she stops moving, but she’s still awake, breathing as rapidly as a cornered rabbit and her eyes moving everywhere at once.

            “Sleep, Lucy,” Castiel whispers in a voice gentler than any Dean has ever heard, except maybe his mother’s. As Lucy’s eyes roll back into her head and flutter shut, Castiel meets Dean’s stare with a flash of raw pain that chills Dean to the bone.

ﭷ

_Sam_

Sam doesn’t want to look at Lucy. Sam _can’t_ look at Lucy. He feels like he has failed her. All of his research on this disease has amounted to nothing if he can’t perform the most important task of all. He forces himself not to look at Castiel. The angel looks like he’s close to tears, and Sam can’t help but feel like he’s the cause. He has failed Lucy, has failed Castiel, and has failed himself.

            He looks at Dean instead. Dean, his rock, who has been his support system since he was six months old. Sam draws strength from Dean now, and sits up straighter.

            “We should let her sleep,” he states quietly. “Let’s go eat or something.”

            “Not hungry.” Castiel’s lips barely move when he speaks. Sam winces at the utterly lost tone to his voice, but he knows this can’t be healthy for him.

            “Eat anyway.” Dean interjects harshly, before Sam can speak. “Eat, and forget about Lucy because you’re messed up right now, Cas, and that’s dangerous.”

            Castiel flinches away from Dean, his eyes locked downward. He doesn’t answer. Sam can’t tell if he doesn’t want to or if he can’t trust himself to speak. Maybe both.

            “Dean, don’t –”

            “Don’t _what_ , Sam? Don’t act like Lucy’s dead already?” He raises his voice over Sam’s indignant cry at the word ‘dead’. “You don’t know how to save her, I sure as hell don’t, and Cas over here barely has enough wingpower left to wipe his ass. I’m not gonna pretend we don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell that this is gonna blow over, so don’t get pissed just ’cause I’m tellin’ the truth.”

            Sam has to bite his tongue to stop himself from lashing out with the same ferocity. He knows anger is Dean’s way of coping with grief. Instead, he watches Castiel. The angel is staring at the ground, his fingers flexing into fists and out again. Sam sighs at the suspiciously shiny glint to Castiel’s eyes.

            Sam stands sharply, making Dean step back involuntarily. He grabs his older brother by the elbow and takes him aside. “Look, maybe you’re right, okay? But maybe you’re not. And right now, Cas needs you, because he’s losing his friend and we both know how that feels.” Dean swallows hard and looks away, refusing to meet his brother’s eyes.

            “So just…” Sam continues. “Take care of him, okay?”

            When he turns and leaves, the echo of the door slamming behind him rings in his ears with a sense of finality that makes his heart plummet to the ground.

            ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean is left alone with an unconscious girl and a grieving angel.

            He knows Sam is right. He knows how it feels to lose a friend, to lose family, and it isn’t some walk in the park. It’s dark, and painful, and comes with more consequences than one would think.

            Dean’s lips twitch at the memory of their placement on a crossroad demon’s.

            He watches Castiel, and is still watching when the angel begins to cry. His tears are heartbreaking, because Dean can see he’s trying so hard to stop, to compose himself, but they are overwhelming him. And still, he is silent. He is silent and staring and Dean can’t help himself, he strides right over and draws the angel into his arms.

            It takes Castiel a while to respond. Dean can feel his entire body shaking, like his bones are rearranging themselves. When he finally does move, his head drops onto Dean’s shoulder and his arms wrap around the hunter so tightly that Dean almost can’t breathe.

            They stand like that, and it feels nice for Dean to take care of the angel for once, instead of the other way around.

            “I know,” Dean whispers, though Castiel hasn’t spoken. “Hey. I know.”

            Castiel lets out a single wavering breath and steps away from Dean.

            And Dean is absolutely going to pretend he doesn’t immediately miss the angel’s warmth.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

            Castiel doesn’t want to be a burden.

            He doesn’t want to depend on Dean or Sam or anyone. He doesn’t want to be a crutch and he doesn’t want to be weak. But he feels as though his bones are crumbling beneath his skin, making him itch and shake in ways he hadn’t thought were possible. It isn’t as though he has never experienced the loss of someone close to him before, of course he has, but it isn’t quite the same. He has never known all of his brothers and sisters – it would have been impossible to befriend them all, for they are thousands – and there had been regret and sorrow that they were gone from this plane, but it was a detached sort of grief.

            Castiel has come to know Lucy as a friend and as a sister. He has come to know her by her kind smile and teasing words, light enough to make you laugh rather than make you feel mocked. He has come to know her by the beauty she presents to their filthy world without even knowing she does so. He has come to know her as a beacon of the hope and happiness that he had lost when he had felt the Host shift and disappear, when he had begun to feel his grace leeching away to sink deep into the ground where his brothers roll in the pit.

            Even as his fingernails scour deep gouges in the palm of his hand, he does not feel the pain. Instead he feels something in his chest click and roil and twist. He feels like he is screaming, screaming terribly loud, but his throat is dry and his mind is blank and his body is numb and there is no sound.

ﭷ

_Lucy_

the men have left, they’ve gone, they’re gone, they’re wrong

            you can’t stay you have to leave too

            _They were smiling when she saw them last. They were smiling when she saw them alive and they were smiling when she saw them dead, with their flesh rotting off their bones and exposing the skeletal grins behind the faces of the people that had tucked her in every night with a whispered farewell._

            no don’t remember

            _Her brothers always made noise, especially at night when she was trying to sleep and they stubbornly refused to go to bed. They were noisy and, more often than not, obnoxious, and always loud. The gunshots that put bullets in their skulls were loud too._

your fault you should have protected them all your fault

            _She hadn’t even known the town was infected when she returned home from walking their dog, Sadie, and found her family. They’d redecorated the walls. With blood and brain matter._

_And when the food ran out, she’d killed Sadie._

run run lucy run the door is open they left the door open

            you just want to see them again that’s all you just want to see them

            _There was Castiel, who saved her by sheer force of will and with a shining luminescence behind his eyes. All alight in goodness, and he saved her. He heard. He listened. And he understood._

he can’t save you this time lucy you can save yourself you can end yourself

            _She is running. Her bare feet are bleeding from their harsh impact with the cement floors but she doesn’t notice. She doesn’t know where she is going but at the same time she knows exactly where. She is escaping. She will see her family again._

there it is that’s what you’ve been looking for there it is there it is

            relief liberation reprieve

            release

            _She is tracing a path with her fingers down the smooth metal surfaces that have become too familiar to her in these months. She finds freedom in the trigger._

_She places the cold barrel to her head._

ﭷ

_Dean_

They had only left her alone for two minutes. Two minutes, to grab something from the kitchen and bring it back up. Dean knows something is wrong as soon as they turn the corner.

            The door is wide open.

            Castiel stills next to him. He hasn’t said a word since his earlier breakdown, but now he breathes out a haggard, “ _No,_ ” and his voice is like the echo of a scream in Dean’s ears.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel doesn’t alert Dean as to what he is going to do. He sees the hunter turn and mouth his name, but he is already gone. Every flit from room to room drains him, but he keeps on, his wings in a whirlwind as chaotic as his mind.

            When he reaches the weapons’ room, he feels like the ground is yawning open beneath him and swallowing him whole.

            Lucy’s eyes are open, but unfocused.

She stands before Castiel a ghost of her former self, a smile twitching the corners of her lips up as she concentrates on the words her diseased brain is feeding her.

            “Lucy,” Castiel whispers, and he does not recognize himself as he speaks. “Lucy, put down the gun.”

            “Relief.” Lucy utters, so quietly that Castiel would’ve thought she hadn’t even said anything if he hadn’t seen her lips move.

            “No, Lucy. There is another way. There must be another way.” Desperation makes Castiel’s voice scratchy. He shuffles closer to the girl, very subtly, so as not to scare her.

            “Liberation.” Lucy’s free hand creeps up to a pendant around her neck that Castiel had never noticed before. A gold cross. Castiel nearly laughs aloud at the irony, but the wry amusement gives way to panic when Lucy’s finger inches closer to the trigger.

            “Lucy, listen to me.” Castiel is speaking very quickly. “We’re going to cure you. You’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”

            “Reprieve.” Lucy breathes in deeply, as if bracing herself for – _No._ Castiel won’t let it happen. He crawls forward even closer, preparing himself to take the gun away from her.

            A chill passes through Castiel when Lucy’s pupils finally focus on him. All subtlety lost, he lurches towards her, hands extended.

            “ _Release._ ” Lucy whispers with conviction, eyes blazing, and before Castiel can reach her, before he can even blink, the gun goes off.

            Castiel does not move when he is sprayed with her blood. He does not move when her body collapses and lands on the floor with a heavy thud that rings in his ears louder than the gunshot does. He keeps staring at the area of now empty air where her face had been, struggling to memorize her the way she had been.

Lucy’s eyes are open, but unfocused.

He does not move when Dean throws the door open after what feels like hours. He watches mildly as Dean lets out a choking sound at the sight of the body and takes a moment to compose himself before turning to Castiel. He does not listen to the words Dean says to him. He does not move until Dean takes him, practically carries him, out of the room. Even still, he stares, and remembers.

ﭷ

_Dean_

Castiel is heavy in Dean’s arms as the latter struggles to drag the angel away. His blood is pounding in his ears, though whether it’s due to exertion or shock, Dean doesn’t know. He doesn’t realize his hands are shaking until he finally heaves Castiel down onto his bed.

            Dean sits down in the armchair beside the bed, rubbing a hand over his eyes in an effort to clear his vision and his thoughts. “Cas… you okay?”

            Castiel doesn’t answer, choosing instead to stare placidly at the ceiling.

            “Come on, man. I know it’s tough, believe me, but ya gotta… y’know, power through.”

            “How do you do it?” Castiel’s voice is calm, but the sort of calm that the ocean has before a hurricane strikes – biding its time, hiding the destruction roaring and gathering underneath the surface.

            “Do what?”

            “Live with it.” Castiel answers after a breathy pause. “You’ve lost your entire family,” _Ouch._ “Even your surrogate father and your closest friends.” _Double ouch._ “How do you continue? Doesn’t it… _bother_ you?”

            Dean looks up sharply. “Of course it bothers me. What do you take me for? Some cold, heartless bastard? Get off your high horse, Cas, ‘cause maybe you’ve forgotten, that was _you_ when we met.”

            “I don’t mean to argue with you, Dean.” Castiel responds, now with a layer of bland amusement to his voice. “I’m not demeaning you. I envy you.”

            “You – I – what?”

            “I envy your ability to mourn in silence. To not let loss and grief consume you. You are strong, you… you _power through_ , and I wish I could do the same. I wish there was a way I could… turn everything off.”

            “No,” Dean interrupts before Castiel can speak again. He leans forward. “No, Cas, don’t you ever turn it off. Y’know, my dad, he, uh… he used to tell me emotion was weakness. That… well, that that’s how the monsters get you. They find out what makes you tick, and they use it against you. I believed him because he turned what he felt when my mom died into anger, and he used his anger as strength. Y’know, he’d take me on hunts when I was eight, nine years old. And when he ganked a monster, there was no regret; if one of his hunting buddies tagged along and happened to bite it –” Dean takes a heavy breath. “Well, he’d celebrate the fact that it wasn’t him.”

            Castiel is staring at Dean now, as if the angel is drowning and Dean’s words are a lifeline.

            “I believed him for the longest time. But then… then I realized he was wrong. It wasn’t anger that made me strong. If a monster attacked Sammy and me, the thing driving me wasn’t me bein’ pissed that Mom or anyone else died. It was all about protecting Sam. That was what mattered.”

            Dean pauses, his eyes searching Castiel’s face for a hint of understanding. “So that’s what I started doing. If we lose someone, yeah, it sucks. But that’s when I know I gotta defend whatever it is I got left. You can’t let yourself get so wrapped up in could’ve-should’ves. Find somethin’ to live for. _That’s_ how you cope. You’re not gonna get over it, Cas. You’re not gonna forget about it. It’s probably gonna be a while before you stop seeing it every time you close your eyes. But that’s okay – healthy, even. Shovin’ it down’s how you lose control. You gotta turn it into somethin’ that matters.”

            Castiel is looking at him in a way Dean can’t interpret, and that makes him nervous. “What?” he snarks defensively.

            “You’re extraordinarily perceptive for one who acts like nothing touches him.” Castiel muses lightly. “That was an optimistic way of observing things. I haven’t seen that in you since…” His voice trails off as though he can’t conjure a time when Dean had been carefree and happy – which, he probably can’t. Dean had stopped smiling long before they met.

            “Well,” Dean clears his throat. “Tell ya what, I’ll be a regular Mary Sunshine when this is all over. You gonna be okay?”

            Castiel nods politely, and the little knot of tension in Dean’s chest dissipates.

            “Alright then, I’m gonna go tell everyone what happened. Just stay here. Sleep or somethin’. I’ll bring up some grub in a bit.” He stands and walks to the door. He’s about to leave when Castiel stops him.

            “Dean,” he calls from the bed. “Thank you.”

            Dean grins at him. “Maybe I’ll bring up some beer, too. God knows you deserve a drink.”

The door swings gently closed behind him.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

The smile drops off Castiel’s face the second that the door clicks shut.

            He pulls himself into a sitting position on the bed, turning his body so that his legs are dangling off the mattress. There is a hollowness in his chest, a feeling reverberating through him that he can’t place. Over and over again, the image of Lucy’s body falling to the ground plays through his head. He covers his ears to ignore the sound of the gunshot, but it’s no use. He shuts his eyes to force back the wetness springing up in them, but tears sear his feverish cheeks as they escape anyway. Just another thing he can’t control.

            He can feel his vocal cords snapping with the strain of swallowing his screams, can feel his wings pushing to carry him away, somewhere there is no sight and no sound. They press desperately against the warped iron bars of his mind’s cage, and with a ripping noise like flesh pulling itself apart, they open. When he removes his hands from his eyes, he’s across the street, in the bar that Dean calls a second home.

            Castiel laughs aloud, and it sounds like nails screeching on a blackboard. It echoes strangely in the empty room, with its crystal glasses winking invitingly at him from the shelves. And Castiel figures, if he can’t will the grief away, maybe he can drown it instead.

            After the first few bottles, Castiel can no longer taste the bitterness. After three more, he finds that being numb is almost as good as being dead.

            About half the bar and a flash of wings later, Castiel crouches low to the pavement, illuminated in a flickering circle of yellow light from a dying streetlamp. He laughs again, the sound bubbling giddily out of him and bouncing around in his ears like a tennis ball.

            Through his haze-filled mind, he realizes that he is at the edge of the quarantine zone he’d created. His fingers scrabble half-heartedly at the sidewalk as his mood takes a sharp twisting turn downwards. He feels as though he’s swallowed the sun, burning from the inside out with heat and ice, boiling his blood until it’s gone.

            So after he laughs, he screams. He shouts at the sky, where the stars that had once given him such joy to watch now twinkle mockingly at him, and he can hear their glee in his head, laughing endlessly and mercilessly. In his shouts, he relays how Lucy had been his responsibility. She had been his charge, and he had failed her, and so he had failed himself. He questions how his Father could have let this happen, how his brothers and sisters could have chosen not to intervene. And when he has screamed himself hoarse and the stars’ sickly poison stares dare him to say more, he closes his eyes.

            _They say if you pray, then it’s bound to come true._

One step. Two more. He is standing at the very edge of the quarantine zone now. If he took one step further, he’d be completely vulnerable to the virus.

            _But not even God seems to listen to you._

One step.


	4. Chapter Four

_For this alone on Death I wreak_

_The wrath that garners in my heart:_

_He put our lives so far apart_

_We cannot hear each other speak._

_– Alfred Lord Tennyson,_ “In Memoriam A.H.H.”

 

_Dean_

“Should I check on Cas?” Dean asks his brother, who is sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and a worn-down book.

            “Weren’t you just with him an hour ago?” Sam glances towards Dean, raising his eyebrows.

            “Well, yeah, but… he’s in bad shape, man. And I promised I’d bring him somethin’ to eat.”

            “Then do it, Dean. You don’t need my permission.”

            Dean scratches at his temple, nodding to himself more than to Sam. “Right. Okay.”

            The hunter fishes two frozen patties out of the fridge, heading down to the kitchens to prepare Castiel an obligatory ‘I’m sorry your friend shot herself right in front you’ burger. Dean whistles to himself while he works, grinning to himself while imagining the look his best friend’s face would have when he saw the burgers – ever since the encounter with Famine, Castiel had not lost his taste for red meat. When they are done, he grabs two ice-cold beers and, balancing the plates on one hand and handling the beers with the other, shoves the door to Castiel’s room open.

            “Rise and shine, Sleeping Beau – ” Dean’s voice trails off when he spots the empty bed. His stomach sinks very suddenly, and begins to do backflips. The cold atmosphere in the air gives him the immediate impression that there is no need to check the bathroom or adjoining kitchen – Castiel is not in the room, and hasn’t been for a while.

            “Cas…” Dean dares to call, once, but the silence that answers him is louder than any voice that might have responded. In a rush, he understands. His body locks and his mind buzzes and he drops the things he’s holding with a crash that mimics the shattering of his heart.

            ﭷ

_Castiel_

Every breath he takes is toxic. This he knows.

            He doesn’t feel fear. He doesn’t feel anxiety or shock.

            He feels nothing. He feels empty.

            His eyes are long dry. His footsteps are quiet.

            He knows that the virus has taken over his bloodstream when he begins contemplating replacing the sound of his heartbeat with silence.

            ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean remembers at the very last second to yank a mask on over his face before sprinting out of the motel. He doesn’t stop to tell Sam where he’s going. His legs are burning, but it’s nothing compared to the slow, harsh ache in his chest.

            “Cas!” he yells, struggling to maintain some hope that the angel will answer. “Cas! _Cas!_ ”

            The night is hushed, and in that moment Dean hates Castiel.

            “Castiel, you son of a bitch!” he shouts. “Dammit, you’re not leaving me now!”

            When there is still no response, Dean turns and slams his fist into the brick wall of a deteriorated building. His skin breaks and gives way to rivulets of blood. Dean doesn’t pay attention to the stinging pain.

            He continues running until he thinks his lungs will burst, before he rounds a corner and spots a familiar silhouette walking slowly and dutifully ahead.

            “ _Cas!_ ”

            The man turns and stares, and Dean is darting forward without a second thought.

            Dean is there to catch Castiel when he falls unconscious and collapses.

            ﭷ

            Dean figures it’s probably adrenaline that makes him able to carry Castiel all the way back to the motel.

            He’s so full of fear that he probably stinks of it.

            When he walks through the doors, Sam is there, but whatever words of “ _why would you leave like that without telling anyone_ ” he has planned for Dean catch in his throat when he sees the unconscious angel in his older brother’s arms.

            Dean puts Castiel on his bed, and orders Sam to lock him into place so he won’t run off like Lucy had.

            Sam asks Dean where he is going.

            Dean says he is going to fix what has been broken.

            ﭷ

_Castiel_

_He feels the last ties to his grace shrivel and disappear. The emptiness of his soul is a bullet wound, dragged over broken glass and shattered in a breath of time. There is a man, and he is calling his name. The man is familiar in the same way his grace had been. When he wakes, his first thought is of the man._

_When he dreams, it is of green eyes._

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean’s throat feels like sandpaper, rough with his angry screams at the sky. His voice is tired and wrecked and burning, and his screams die down to desperate pleas. He shoves the palms of his hands into his eyes when the acidic feeling of welling tears gets to be too much for him.

            “Someone up there has to care about him,” he whispers. “Someone has to _help_!” On the last word, his voice breaks into a shout; he picks up one of the empty beer bottles he’s downed to give him courage and numb his heart and chucks it as far as he can, picturing Heaven as his target. “ _Fix him!_ ”

            “They won’t.” The voice is vaguely familiar and causes Dean to turn around so fast the entire world spins. A man is standing in front of him, and under further inspection, Dean recognizes him as Inias – the one who tried to take Kevin away with Hester. Inias raises his hands in a declaration of peace, but Dean is too angry to care.

            “What the hell do you mean, _they won’t_?” he snaps. “He’s one of you! He’s your brother! He’s…” His throat seizes, and he swallows to clear it. “He’s my brother, too. Fix him. Now.”

            Dean doesn’t have any leverage – no angel-killing blade or anything he can threaten Inias with, and the angel looks at him with something like pity and sorrow in his level eyes. “He’s not one of us anymore. Castiel Fell a long time ago. The angels won’t help him. Not now.”

            Dean lurches forward, grabbing Inias by the collar. Inias doesn’t react, apart from pulling his head back some to escape the hunter’s beer-breath.

            “Do something, anything! Bring him back to us! God damn it, just – I’m not gonna let that son of a bitch die. Not after everything. He’s _family_ , Inias, aren’t angels all about that? You gotta – ” The rage fades out of Dean’s voice. It’s replaced with pain. “Please,” he begs. “I don’t want to lose him.”

            Inias carefully removes himself from Dean’s grip. “I’m sorry, Dean Winchester. It’s not my decision. The Host won’t allow it. They see it as righteous punishment for Castiel’s mistakes.” He glances down and then steps forward, placing a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

            With a soft _whoosh_ of wings, he’s gone.

            Dean retreats inside himself, and carefully locks his heart away.

            ﭷ

_Castiel_

_The man is sitting with him, but he does not remember when the man arrived. The restraints on his wrists are tight, and he doesn’t understand why they’re there._

_The man is only sometimes there. Mostly it’s the other one. The other one keeps saying his name._

_One day, the man tells the other one to stop._

_There are 1,063 stripes on the armchair cushion._

_He tries to say the man’s name, but there is no sound._

_He doesn’t think he remembers it anyway._

ﭷ

_Dean_

It has been a week since Castiel had been infected, and it is getting harder and harder for Dean to get out of bed in the morning.

            He makes a point not to go see Castiel often, only giving in occasionally under the push of his younger brother. He doesn’t see why it’s necessary to go and see the hollow shell of a man his best friend has become.

            ﭷ

_Sam_

Sam all but forces Dean into the room for at least a few minutes every day. Dean doggedly refuses sometimes, but he doesn’t see what Sam sees.

            Sam sees that when Dean leaves the room, Castiel’s blank eyes will follow him. Sam sees that more often than not, Castiel’s mouth will open as if he is trying to say something, and Sam knows that if he could speak, he’d be calling Dean’s name.

            Dean spends more and more of his time in the bar; Sam spends his time running between patrols and caring for Castiel, who can’t feed himself and can barely sit up without heavy prompting.

            _At least he hasn’t gone crazy_ , Sam thinks. _Yet._

About a week and a half after Castiel becomes infected, Sam purposefully assigns himself to a patrol without adding Dean to the group, and goes to tell his brother that he’ll have to watch Castiel that night.

            “Are you friggin’ kidding me, Sam?” Dean snaps. Sam, who has already prepared for a blowout, just shoots a look at him. “I’m not a damn babysitter!”

            “Dean, he can’t take care of himself. He needs someone there. He needs you.”

            “Yeah, well, he should’ve thought about that before he went all Truman Capote on our asses.” Dean retorts, ignoring Sam’s shocked expression.

            “He’s our friend.” Sam mutters, knowing he’s hitting Dean where it hurts, but not being able to find it in him to care. “I never figured you’d be one to throw away his friends so easily.”

            ﭷ

_Dean_

Sam leaves, and Dean hovers uncertainly outside of the door to Castiel’s room. He memorizes the nicks in the metal of the room number, counts the number of ceiling tiles, discovers vague images in the grain of the wooden doorframe.

Finally, he clasps his hand around the knob, and enters.

Castiel hasn’t moved since Dean had last seen him; he still lies quietly on his back, head turned and staring out the window on the far side of the room.

“You’re gonna get a crick in your neck if you keep that up, y’know.” Dean tells him, laughing quietly and uncomfortably. His voice sounds too loud in the silence, and Castiel doesn’t even blink. Dean feels an invisible creature tighten its viselike grip on his heart.

Dean rubs a hand over his eyes and sits down heavily in the armchair, resisting the urge to punch Castiel, or maybe kiss him. Anything to get some kind of reaction out of him.

“Sam’s gone out on patrol, so you’re stuck with me till he gets back.” Dean speaks again, even though he knows that Castiel might be able to hear, but he’s beyond listening. “I’ll get outta your hair soon enough.”

Dean feels itchy looking at Castiel, like ants are crawling all over his skin. He hates seeing his best friend so broken, so ruined, and so beyond repair.

_Bastard angels_ , he whispers internally. _You gave up on him the moment he chose us, didn’t you?_

For a few minutes, the only sound is their soft breathing. Dean glances over at Castiel more often than he’d like to admit, and each time is a blow to the stomach. Castiel doesn’t even register his presence. Finally, in a spark of spite and anger, Dean drags the armchair around to the other side, successfully blocking the window with his body and forcing Castiel to face him.

            There isn’t anything he wouldn’t give for those ancient blue eyes to look at him.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

_The man’s voice distracts him from his wanderings._

_He sees the vast blueness, so empty, so precious, just beyond his reach._

_There aren’t thoughts enough to describe his longing to fly once more._

_But his wings are gone. His grace is gone. His soul is hollow and there is nothing within him._

_The man is there, a blackened edge on his vision, obscuring his freedom._

_His relief, liberation, reprieve, and release._

_The man is saying words, and he watches them swirl through the air in indescribable colors, in voices beyond sound, and tasting of unexplored universes. He is soaring through the cosmos, seeing everything and nothing, drowning deserts, draining oceans, splitting lands in two with a single touch. He creates stars and scatters them into the blankness, carves moons out of marble, sculpts galaxies in a breath of nimbus. He is pulled so deep into the ocean that he finds the sun. In its fires, he discovers ice._

_His mind is dark with the memory of flight. His bones ache and fall apart and knit themselves back together in a heartbeat. The man reminds him of his sun; a breathtaking tornado of raw, unadulterated light._

_His fingers begin to reach, molecule by molecule, with the leaden weight of a stone soldier._

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean is in the middle of a sentence when he sees the twitch in Castiel’s hand. He doesn’t remember the next word he’s supposed to say. All that comes out of his mouth is a crooked, “Cas?”

            Castiel doesn’t answer, but he blinks. Whether it was conscious or not doesn’t matter to Dean. A bizarre melting pot of dread and hope bubbles inside him, rushing through to his very core.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

_He strains against the invisible chains that deafen his ears and mute his tongue. Every filament, every fiber crosshatched together to build his fleshy prison, scream to the point of bursting. They vibrate with undiluted fire, heating his veins and exciting his nerves. There is warmth, and he revels in its glory. There is sun, and he captures the ghost of a smile. There are green eyes, and the man’s name etches itself into his skin, his bones, the backs of his eyelids._

_The warmth turns sour, burning and boiling and cooking his mindscape rather than empowering it, and the man’s name slips from him. There is bitterness on the air, in the land, and it drags him down with the force of a hurricane. The sun is replaced, but not by the moon – the moon is a thief, but it gives off light, and his world is dark. His joints pop and his teeth shatter into pieces. His lungs press against his breast, withered and gasping. His heart beats so quickly it begins to falter._

ﭷ

_Dean_

The hope drains away with a nauseating gurgling sound within Dean. A mere twenty seconds before, lucidity had been returning to Castiel; there was recognition in his focused eyes, his lips parted with a single-syllable name on their surface, his hands were reaching forward.

            As quickly as it had started, it ends. Castiel is awake, but thrashing in very sharp and jerky movements, his fingernails digging into the sheets so harshly Dean is afraid they will rip. He springs into action when Castiel seizes once more and slams his temple into the headboard, where a trickle of red circles cerulean eyes.

            Dean grabs Castiel by the wrists one-handedly and holds him still with his knee on the other man’s leg and a palm on his chest. Castiel still struggles, but limply now, his throat bucking as he gasps to draw air. Dean can’t tell if it is Castiel’s heartbeat or his own that’s threatening to break a speed record.

            Castiel is cold to the touch, but there is sweat curling the hair above his ears. His form, already significantly slimmer than Dean is used to due to the lack of enormous trench coat, seems tiny and childlike in his sudden sickness.

            Dean waits for Castiel to stop moving completely before clambering off the other man. His throat feels full of cotton. He is haunted by the image of Castiel before the attack; on the path back to the Castiel he knew before something tackled him off-course.

            _What the hell’s going on with you, man?_

ﭷ

_Castiel_

_Angels were born into a world of darkness, and it should not frighten him as much as it does. There is ice where his heart should be as what used to be his eyes attempt to see something, anything. Where before there was wind, there is nothing brushing his skin. Where before there was fire, there is a coldness running so deep it would frighten Hell. Where before he had at least his own heartbeat to keep him company, there is no sound._

_There is firmness beneath his feet, and he crouches down to feel it. The dust comes off on his fingers and turns them to blackness. He rattles in his flesh, shivering down to his very atoms in fear. A gentle caress along his back sends him tumbling forward and on, far beyond what he knows. He turns, swallowing the panic that rises like bile inside him, and what he sees rips a horrible cry from him._

_But he has no voice left to scream with._

ﭷ

            _The man in front of him is smiling a smile that strips away his skin and leaves his skull bare to the world. There is a grotesque familiarity in the smile, and he struggles to remember who this man is. A single letter floats through the bubbling depths of his mind and surfaces in a flash of wings and blue light._

_B._

_“Hello, darling,” B says, and his voice is lilting and cold. “Miss me?”_

ﭷ

_He tries to speak, but his tongue holds fast in his mouth as if stuck. The man, B, is a disfigured personification of his former self. He remembers lively eyes and merry laughter. He remembers brotherhood._

_“Oh, don’t hurt yourself, Castiel.” B mocks, and he has been labeled, he knows his name. “Wouldn’t want you to break a nail now, would we?”_

_Castiel’s feet do not move when he tries to walk, and the swell of despair that swallows him almost knocks him off-balance. B paces around him predatorily, and in the shadows his smile flickers into a snarl._

_“You know, you shouldn’t take the phrase ‘back-stabbing’ quite so literally,” B speaks softly, slowly closing the difference between him and Castiel. “Some people tend to take offense.”_

_When Castiel finally wrenches himself free from the invisible hold on his tongue, the first thing he says is, “I’m sorry.” He gasps it in a twist of pain and anguish, whispers it, rolls the words around in his mouth. They taste bitter and metallic with guilt._

_B’s eyes spark in a way that chills every nerve in Castiel’s body._

_“Oh, you’re sorry, I see. Perfectly alright then. No harm done.” There is a dangerous edge to his voice that even Castiel, in the state he is in, finds makes him uneasy. He had never understood the expression ‘sets off alarm bells in my head’, but now they ring and ring and ring._

ﭷ

_Dean_

No matter how hard he tries, Dean can’t take his eyes off of Castiel. When Sam returns from the patrol, Dean tells him to go to bed, that he will take care of Castiel for the night. The room turns darker as the sun sets outside, but Dean doesn’t move.

            Castiel makes no noise apart from the occasional whine, and each one pierces Dean like a knife.

            “Cas, you gotta wake up,” Dean whispers when the silence begins to be too much for him, and his loud voice breaks the air like a whip. “Cas, buddy, wake up.”

ﭷ

_Castiel_

_The punch springs forward like a slingshot, the hit landing squarely in the nose and sending Castiel reeling backward. He hears the cartilage squeak and snap, and gazes in wonder at the red that comes away on his fingers when he puts his hand to his face._

_B – Balthazar, Castiel realizes with a start – steps forward with the expression of a patient, toothy carnivore._

_“You’re_ sorry _, Castiel? Is that what you said? Perhaps you should have thought of that before you daggered me for trying to save your pathetic soul.”_

_Castiel gasps in pain as Balthazar’s foot shoots up and slams into his stomach, knocking him to the ground. He lies there, wounded, while Balthazar circles him like a hawk. Or, more appropriately, a vulture._

_“How many of our brothers did you kill, Castiel?” Balthazar taunts. “How many wingmarks did you wash off your body? Do you smell the scent of death and betrayal you carry around on your skin?”_

_“Please…” Castiel wheezes, and Balthazar drives the heel of his boot into his ribs to quiet him._

_“The time for begging is later, Cassie.” He says the nickname with a sneer. “You destroyed Heaven. You killed half of the Host in your power-hungry dive off the deep end. You murdered everything God stood for, and all you can say is that you’re_ sorry. _”_

_Castiel doesn’t speak again, but that doesn’t stop Balthazar from dragging him up by the hair and punching him in the cheek so hard he nearly bites his tongue clean off. Castiel whimpers, feeling a tooth loosen, and his mouth fills with blood._

_“Spare me, Castiel. No one likes a baby.”_

_Balthazar removes a familiar blade from his belt, sleek and silver and dripping with something so dark and foul that Castiel can smell its evil wafting in visible waves._

_Then his world of darkness turns to pain, a pain so brilliant that Castiel feels his vocal cords rip into shreds with his screams. His flesh melts off only to be replaced and torn apart again, and his eyes register nothing but a blood-red sky painted with his insides._

_In his bubbling, blistering agony, he manages to rasp out a single word, a single syllable, a single thought._

_“Dean.”_


	5. Chapter Five

_Now I will burn you back, I will burn you through,_

_Though I am damned for it we two will lie_

_And burn._

_– Charlotte Mew,_ “In Nunhead Cemetery”

_Dean_

Dean startles awake with no recollection of having fallen asleep. He’s still in the armchair, and Castiel is still lying unmoving on the bed, his eyes slits of sapphire gleaming through bruised lids. Dean tries to remember what woke him. He hears the echo of Castiel’s voice in his ears like a memory, but it doesn’t form words in his mind.

            “Cas?” he whispers cautiously, voice still rough from sleep. “You awake in there?”

            There’s no answer.

            Only silence.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

_Castiel dies, and is rebuilt only to die again._

_There is so much pain that if it were tangible, he’d be swimming in it._

_His eyes melt in their sockets. His ribs shatter. His fingers walk away from him._

_He is forced to watch as Balthazar removes his skin in strips and scatters them into the abyss._

_When the wings he believed to be lost manifest, all but useless in the good they do him, Balthazar stabs through them again and again._

ﭷ

_Balthazar has disappeared. Castiel takes the time to heal himself, in this half-dream state where he has retained some angelicy. He lies there, and he no longer feels. His body’s screams were drowned out long ago, when his nerves short-circuited._

_“I deserve this,” he says, and the admission makes his eyes water. “I deserve every bit of this.”_

_“Hm, true.” A voice comes from behind him, and he wheels around to face a girl. A small girl, with a shock of red hair and a face sharp with shadow. She swings a gun in her hands._

_“Lucy,” he whispers. Her expression turns to steel._

_“Did I deserve it, Castiel?” she murmurs, her eyes flinty with distaste. “Did I deserve that bullet through my skull? It’s still there, y’know. Sometimes I can hear it rattling around when I shake my head. ‘Course, that’s only because it’s got nothing left to stick to. It’s empty in there.” She points to her temple. “I might have held that gun, but you’re the one that killed me.”_

_Castiel resists the urge to retch as Lucy wanders nearer. She handles the gun like a toy, waving and whirling, and the shine of the metal barrel makes Castiel’s heart clench._

_“You ever wonder why you’re not an angel anymore?” Lucy asks, amusement clear in her tone. “It’s ‘cause you’re not good enough, Castiel. You can’t save a single human in that town, so don’t pretend you can. Maybe if you hadn’t screwed up so damn bad, I wouldn’t’ve died. You could’ve fixed me. Waved your magic wand and I’d be good as new. You could’ve fixed everyone, and maybe you’d still have a world to go back to.”_

_Castiel backs up, but there’s nowhere to escape to. The darkness is both too broad and too stifling, confining him in a space so tight his lungs are paper-thin at the same time that it stretches him until he pops. “That’s not true…”_

_“Everyone’s dead because of you, Castiel. Everyone’s dead because you couldn’t save ‘em.”_

_Castiel finds himself kneeling, his palms clenched around his ears as if that’ll ward off the poisonous sound of Lucy’s declarations. “That’s not true,” he tries to say again._

_“If you hadn’t killed me, I could’ve settled. I’d’ve been happy in that town. I’d’ve married and had two sweet little kids, and they’d have their uncles and their grandparents and be able to go outside without worryin’ that the fresh air would kill ‘em in a day. We’d go to church every Sunday and thank God we wanted for nothin’.” She fixes Castiel with a stare that boils his blood. “Funny how things change, ain’t it? Now I’m stuck in this hellhole and God is nothing but a bedtime story.”_

_Castiel can barely muster the strength to mouth the words, “Not true.”_

_“Did you murder your daddy like you murdered me? ‘Cause he’s not here, Castiel, and he won’t ever be. Not for you. Not for me. Not for a damned human soul left on that godforsaken planet. You’ve killed us all, and now you’re gonna kill yourself.” She lifts the gun and points it straight at Castiel._

_“Bang.”_

ﭷ

_Dean_

Castiel is screaming, and in a desperate attempt to quiet him, Dean punches him in the jaw.

            Sam is standing next to him, his mouth hanging open. “You didn’t have to hit him.”

            They stare at Castiel’s now-immobile body, where a trickle of red seeps from a split lip.

            Dean’s face is burning with shame. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he mutters, but it lacks conviction even to his own ears. He turns away, and his face is not the only thing burning, but his eyes. “I just don’t know what else to do.”

ﭷ

_Castiel_

_Nerves are a pathway, stretching from the brain to the tips of the fingers to the ends of the toes._

_When nerve receptors detect pain, they fire messages to the brain: like an automatic “tell us what to do” button. On the way, the receptors pass through the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, which directs reflexes – if you were to step on a sharp rock, your dorsal horn would tell you to take your foot off._

_Castiel feels as though the connection between his dorsal horn and his neural receptors is broken, and he can’t lift his foot off the rock._

_The pain is continual and condensed as he lies gasping on his back. Lucy is standing over him, the end of the gun still smoking where the bullet twisted out through the muzzle and into Castiel’s skull._

_“Tell me how you sleep at night, Castiel.”_

_“I don’t.” The words tumble out of his bloodied mouth before he can stop them. “I can’t. How could I? There’s a war inside my head.”_

_Lucy smiles a wretched grin that reminds Castiel of a marionette with snipped strings. “I really do hope you don’t expect to win.”_

ﭷ

_Dean_

Castiel doesn’t make a sound for three days.

            Eventually, Sam tells Dean to go back to his own room for a night of rest.

            “Cas,” he whispers before he falls asleep. He carries the name on his tongue all night.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

_Castiel is alone, but after the last time, he has learned that this means nothing._

_He spends the moments in dread, takes minutes to heal himself, and awaits his next punishment._

_It does not keep him waiting long._

_He has his wings drawn about his body in a sort of makeshift cocoon when a laugh rings out and echoes off the walls of his mind._

_“Show me your face, little bird,” it mocks, and Castiel lifts his head sharply when he recognizes the voice._

_Dean stands over him, but this is not his Dean. His Dean is good and kind at heart, and this one resonates with an evil so deep it coaxes exquisite fear out of him and sends a bucket of ice down his spine._

_Castiel is paralyzed, this time not by invocation but by terror. He drops his tattered wings, turning them down automatically in a subconscious gesture of angelic surrender. Dean tuts under his breath and utters another bone-chilling laugh._

_“Castiel,” he begins, and the angel’s full name slipping from Dean’s mouth sounds strange to Castiel’s ears._

_Castiel waits for more, and it comes in the form of a punch so powerful he sees stars. He is knocked backward, dazed, and then he is on his back and Dean is straddling him. The hunter pulls a knife from thin air, draws it lightly along his hands, spins it in his fingers._

_“World-class friend you are, Castiel,” Dean murmurs in a tone of infinite patience. “It’s a real son of a bitch who turns on his brothers. Especially to help the King of Hell.”_

_Castiel feels like he’s drowning. “I didn’t… I never dreamed that it would…”_

_“Be so bad? Is that what you’re gonna say? Power-hungry Castiel, starving for souls, desperate for control. You forgot what you had. You forgot us.” Dean’s voice is wistful, and Castiel feels heartbroken with guilt for a moment until Dean leans forward to whisper in his ear. “But you are nothing now.”_

_In a flash, Dean buries the knife to the hilt in Castiel’s throat, and Castiel tries to scream but only succeeds in bleeding out faster. It covers Dean’s shirt, and Dean climbs off him with an expression of mild distaste._

_“Just to keep you in place,” Dean tells him, and Castiel thrashes but can’t loosen himself from the dagger’s hold on the ground beneath him._

_Dean walks over to where Castiel’s wings are beating against the darkness, struggling to find purchase on the invisible floor. With a harsh yank, he grabs the left one and stretches it out until the joints pop and Castiel gurgles in pain. Dean conjures another knife out of nothingness and stabs it into the wing, pinning it down as an entomologist might a moth. Castiel makes a sound that at one point might have been the word, “Please.”_

_Dean pins the other wing in response._

ﭷ

_He begins at the small bones, the delicate digits at the wingtip. It’s a pain similar to broken fingers, and Castiel bites his tongue until he tastes blood._

_Dean works his way up the wing, breaking each bone with slow, measured movements. Castiel listens to each snap and doesn’t make a sound apart from a sharp, hissing intake of breath at every crack. It’s a cruel thing that Castiel knows wingbreaking is a common punishment to angels in Heaven, and has observed his fair share of it._

_Dean pulls the knife out of Castiel’s throat and shoves him into a sitting position. The angel yelps in pain as his wings, still pinned, are ripped further by the knives holding them in place. But it’s not until he feels the stinging kiss of metal run along his spine that his heart climbs into his throat._

_“Pretty wings, little bird,” Dean coos, tracing each feather with his knife. “I’d love to have ‘em.”_

_“No,” Castiel croaks, and Dean laughs, a harsh and bitter sound._

_“I don’t believe you got a choice in the matter, little bird,” Dean tells him, and his voice bubbles with cold amusement. “You played God, man. You picked the side of the Devil. You remember what happened to him? Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…” Dean sings the last part, lifting his blade. Agony explodes inside Castiel, igniting him all over, and this time the angel can’t swallow his screams. The sound of Dean sawing at sinew and bone makes Castiel’s stomach churn._

_“And all the king’s horses…”_

_Castiel’s back is slick with blood and tattered flesh. He whimpers and shrieks as Dean hacks at any bit of flesh he can reach. Dean manages to snip through the last tendons anchoring Castiel’s right wing to his shoulder blade. Castiel hears a distant wail, and imagines that if he could see the stars, they would be weeping._

_“And all the king’s men…”_

_Dean moves to the other wing, and Castiel barks a cry of protest and despair. Dean snickers to himself before beginning the treatment once more. His laughter is drowned out by Castiel’s wordless screams of anguish. Castiel finds himself begging for unconsciousness, praying for death, anything to spare him the loss of his wings._

_“Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”_

_With a brutal yank, Dean pulls off Castiel’s remaining wing, stepping back from the carnage decorated head to toe with red. Castiel is spitting up blood, his stomach heaving as his cells try to repair the damage. It’s futile, of course._

_Dean circles around to face Castiel and crouches down, reaching forward. He cups Castiel’s face, wiping the blood from the angel’s cheek, and for a moment there is something like pity in his eyes. “Tell me; what do you do with a wounded bird, Castiel?”_

_He leans even closer and forces Castiel to look at him. Castiel finds that his dreams of green eyes have turned to nightmares. Dean tilts his head, all fire and ice and blood, and answers his own question._

_“You put it down.”_

ﭷ

_Dean_

Castiel’s shrieking keeps Dean up all night, shivering under his thick covers. He bites his nails down to the quick, and covers his face with his pillow until the lack of oxygen forces him back out again.

            Dean feels the burning need to add his own shouts to Castiel’s. The pressure builds in his chest and bubbles into his throat and scratches at him from the inside. After what seems like hours, when Castiel’s screams have turned to guttural sobs, Dean scrambles out of bed and walks to Castiel’s room.

            Castiel had jerked around so much that he’d fallen off the bed. He lies on his stomach, suffering the occasional spasm during which his arms reach around to claw at his back. Dean stares at him for a heartbeat, unwilling and unable to approach him when he’s in such an agitated state, but pays no attention to his reluctance and crouches down beside Castiel.

            Dean flips him over gently, clenching his teeth and trying to ignore Castiel’s broken whimpers, and pushes the hair away from Castiel’s sweat-soaked forehead. After a second of indecision, he scoops the angel up in his arms and sets him back down on the bed, running a hand over his face to keep the tears at bay.

            “You gotta tell me how to help you, man,” he begins, and his voice most definitely does _not_  crack. “I know you’re in there. You almost got back once, you can do it again.”

            Castiel groans and shudders, and his hands seek his shoulder blades once more.

            “Come on, man. What’s goin’ on with you? I need y – ” Dean breaks off with a yelp when Castiel suddenly sits up straight and grabs Dean by the shoulders, pulling him forward until their faces are inches apart.

            “What have you done?” Castiel whispers in the voice of a lunatic, his eyes wild.

            “Cas, what are you – ow!”

            Castiel’s fingers dig into Dean’s shoulders, holding him tight when he struggles.

            “What have you done to me?” His eyes are fixed somewhere behind Dean. “ _What have you done to me?_ ”

            “Cas, calm down, okay? Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”

            “You took them. _You took them!_ ”

            Dean yanks Castiel’s hands off his shoulders, holding them tight and pushing the angel back onto the bed. “It’s me! Cas, it’s Dean! What the hell’s your problem?” Castiel wails incoherently, sweating bullets and panting like he can’t find the breath he needs.

            “They’re gone. They’re gone, I can’t feel them anymore, _why can’t I feel them anymore?_ ” Castiel whispers, hushed and broken. “No. _No!_ ”

            The last word breaks into a screech that leaves Dean’s ears ringing. Castiel’s eyes light up all white and blue with a heavenly glow, and for a second Dean thinks he can hear the telltale _whoosh_ of angel feathers, but then the light dies and Castiel slumps back and there is no sound.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

It’s as though his mind shatters into shards of glass. Castiel can hear the explosion, beginning as a low rumble and coalescing into a fragmented kaleidoscope of sound.

            He sits up straight, and for a moment the white light that envelops him is blinding. He feels its fire rip his molecules apart, injecting his veins with ice, burning and freezing all at once. The light rebuilds him, and as his eyes adjust, he realizes he is surrounded by trees.

            After spending so long encased in darkness, the sight makes his breath hitch and tears leak from his tired lids. With shaking hands, he touches the rocks around him reverently, holding a pebble in his grip until his muscles ache, taking comfort in its sensation. He breathes deeply when a breeze dances over his newly stitched skin. There is sand in his shoes, but it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever felt.

            Castiel wonders where he is. The last thing he remembers is the surprise on Dean’s face when he burst from the world that held him in its viselike grip. He remembers breaking free from the clutching fists and he thinks he remembers _his_ Dean, just for a second.

            Castiel turns his face to the sky, wishing he could see the sun once more, but clouds hide it from his view. So he walks, legs shaking from disuse, stumbling as his body continues to throb from his torture. The wind whistles as it finds nooks between the boulders, creating an eerie hum that sends cold fingers dancing down Castiel’s spine.

            As he walks, he realizes with a twist of the heart that his wings are truly gone. Whatever that other Dean did to him in the black cage stripped him of his angelicy, and Castiel cannot decide whether to be angry or fearful. He settles for both, letting the bizarre release of rage wash through his being and pulse in time with his heartbeat.

            He’s so concentrated on his own thoughts that he doesn’t see the figure flying towards him until it  collides with him.

            Castiel yelps as his already battered body is slammed into a tree trunk. Needled teeth meet his neck in a parody of a gentle kiss. The creature draws back, inhaling deeply, and Castiel’s heart sticks in his throat at the sight.

            It may have once been human. Castiel can’t tell. It walks on two legs, at least, two deeply bowed legs that are nothing but muscle and sinew now. Its upper body is charred, to the bone in some places, giving off the stench of burnt meat. Uneven, sunken red eyes gleam at him, and there’s a slash in its face that shoots him a predatory grin around teeth that look like broken glass. Castiel winces as rust-colored claws dig into his shoulders, trapping him.

            The monster opens its mouth, but instead of words, it lets loose a shriek that freezes Castiel in his place and sends uncontrollable shivers through his body. It wheezes and screams again, and it is then that Castiel realizes it is probably calling to others like it. He takes action, sweeping out with his leg to kick the thing in the stomach. It hiccups a growling snarl and lunges, but Castiel ducks under its swiping arms and begins to run.

            He doesn’t get very far before his tired muscles, still not fully recovered, beg him to stop. He finds an outcrop jutting from the ground that he uses to shield himself from view, trying to catch his breath quietly when he hears the scuttling of various creatures following him.

             When it hits him that he can’t fly to escape, he removes his suit jacket and drapes it over the outcrop. If the monsters are tracking his scent, he hopes it will distract their senses for a while until he can get away.

            It works, for now. There’s another bloodcurdling shriek when they find the jacket, and when Castiel looks over his shoulder for a split second, they are ripping into it with such ferocity that it makes his stomach turn. One of the creatures lifts its head and spots Castiel’s retreating figure.

            He runs as fast as he can, twigs snapping beneath his feet like the jaws of rabid dogs.

            He doesn’t run fast enough.

ﭷ

_Dean_

The screaming lulls him to sleep, and the screaming carries him through his dreaming.

            The room is clean. White. Nearly glowing. Dean can barely distinguish one wall from the other.

            In one corner of the room crouches a figure. It’s still, handcuffed, with its head hanging in an execution stance. It’s facing the wall, but there’s something infinitely familiar about it, something that speaks of ancient blue eyes and pure, flashing light.

            “Castiel?” Dean whispers, and though there is no sound in the dream, the figure jerks as though it’s heard him. Dean opens his mouth to call out again, but the man begins to spasm as if the utterance of his name has triggered a seizure. He whips his head from left to right, slamming it into the walls until they are painted red with his blood.

            “Cas!” Dean shouts wordlessly, but the man simply runs into the wall again and again. His skin slides off to reveal red, wet-looking muscles and tendons. With a flick of his wrists, the man snaps off the handcuffs and turns to face Dean.

            Dean gags, swallowing down the bile that stings the back of his throat. The man’s face has been reduced to nothing more than a bloody, sopping mess. It opens what used to be a mouth and lets out a scream that jars Dean’s nerves even as the creature begins to approach.

            “No!” Dean manages to gasp, turning to run. There is nothing but wall behind him. He tries to move out of the creature’s path, but his veins feel as though they’ve been injected full of lead. The creature stalks forward on nimble, twisting legs. It growls, and Dean can feel the vibration run down his spine.

            “Cas, it’s me!” Dean cries, and the monster stops advancing. It tilts its head in a manner so familiar that Dean doesn’t know whether it’s relief or despair that washes his bones.

            After a tension-riddled moment of indecision, the monster turns to leave. Dean visibly relaxes, limbs nearly turning to jelly, before he sees the monster lift a hand. It rests its claws on the wall.

            With a bitter snarl, it slashes through the wall as if it were made of parchment, and its following croon sounds like a victory cry. Dean stares at the parallel gashes, where flames lick in from the outside, desperate and hungry.  

            They reach the creature first. It stands still, letting the fire soak into its flesh and turn the bloodied skin to a blackened crisp. Dean imagines that somewhere deep inside its poisoned mind, it is laughing.

            With fire comes smoke, and before too long Dean is coughing through a constricted airway and blinking away heavy tears. Still, the creature stands and stares at him. Dean drops to his knees, fanning the air around him desperately. The deadly gray ash is suffocating and claustrophobic and it reminds Dean of when he woke up in a tiny pine box all those years ago, stuck six feet beneath everything he’d ever known.

            Dean manages to open his eyes to catch one last glimpse of the creature. It is standing right in front of him now. For a moment, the light catches its shadow in such a way that Dean thinks he sees wings.

            _A long time ago, Castiel looked out his window and saw a bird,_ it says, its voice a low grumble in Dean’s mind. _So he grew wings and followed it._

The fire tickles Dean’s flesh as it dances its way across it. The smoke is a pillow.

            _Later, Castiel looked down and saw a man, broken, in chains._

Dean’s vision tunnels sharply, and his body is no longer an anchor but a cloud.

            _So he cut off his wings and followed him._


	6. Chapter Six

_It was night, and the rain fell;_

_and falling, it was rain, but,_

_having fallen, it was blood._

_– Edgar Allan Poe,_ “Silence”

           

_Dean_

“So why do you think he hasn’t tried to kill himself yet?”

            The question startles Dean out of his reverie, where images from his most recent nightmare have surfaced and run free. It’s two days after that horrible night, and Dean’s head is still pounding from the whiskey he scarfed down to chase the memories away. “What?”

            “Cas,” Sam clarifies. There’s a little frown just above his nose that only appears when he’s deep in thought.

            “I don’t know, man,” Dean answers, rubbing a hand over his face. He’s tired, and not quite ready to discuss the circumstances behind Castiel’s will-he-won’t-he death plan. “He’s an angel. Maybe that has somethin’ to do with it.”

            “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” Sam mutters, more to himself than in response to Dean. He taps the cover of the book he’s holding pensively, and each tap sends a spike of pain through Dean’s alcohol-soaked brain. “Angels don’t have corporeal form, right? I mean, they’re basically just a mass of light and grace or whatever.”

            Dean drops his head on the table with an audible thump. “Sam, if you’re gonna start a lecture on angel studies, I’m beggin’ you, take it somewhere else.”

            “No – listen, Dean, this is important,” Sam whacks him lightly over the head with his book, and Dean grumbles a nonsense insult at him under his breath. “Angels don’t have bodies, not really. Their whole being is in their grace, their soul. They exist separately from their vessels. Like how the angel blades are the only thing that can kill them because they target their grace, not their material form. So maybe the reason why he’s not freaking out on the physical plane – ”

            “You think something’s happening to him in his mind?” Dean interrupts, because he can practically hear the ‘eureka!’ that’s close to bursting out of his brother.

            “Exactly. The toxin isn’t killing him out here, it’s killing him in his mind, probably literally ripping out his grace from the inside.”

            Dean thinks back to his last encounter with Castiel. “He told me that I took them,” he murmurs.

            “What?” Sam asks, his tone carefully controlled with barely suppressed intensity.

            “He woke up a couple of days ago actin’ even crazier than usual, screaming at me that I took them. And before you ask, I don’t know what ‘they’ are.”

            “I think I do.” Sam rubbed at his temples, steepling his fingers over his nose. “What’s the only part of an angel that we really ever see?”

            Dean’s jaw drops. “The wings.”

            “And the wings are a manifestation of grace. An angel without wings isn’t really an angel, is it?”

            “Alright, wait, hold up.” Dean stands, pacing to get rid of the nervous energy now flooding his veins. “So you’re saying that the virus took Cas’ wings? Is that even possible?”

            Sam shrugs wearily. “I guess if it’s in Cas’ mind, then it can take form. It’s like, Cas is dreaming right now. But his dreams are more like hallucinations, or fever dreams. When your mind goes stir-crazy with fear and starts putting things where it shouldn’t.”

            “Right, like a kid who’s afraid of the dark seeing a monster in the shadows of his room at night.”

            “Yeah, except the virus is twisting what he sees so badly that he’s tearing out his own grace. He might not even know he’s doing it. He probably thinks the hallucinations are real and that they’re the ones attacking him.”

            Dean sits back down, unsteady with the realization that comes with Sam’s last words. “He said I took his wings. Why me? Why’s the virus makin’ him think I’m killing him?”

            Sam shakes his head, snorting lightly. Not derisively, but just enough to make Dean bristle. “It’d be what would hurt him the most, Dean.”

            “What? Why would – ”

            “’Cause it’s Cas, and I don’t think anyone else has ever meant more to him than you do.”

ﭷ

_Castiel_

On some primal instinct, Castiel manages to duck before the creature’s claws catch him from behind. The beast chatters angrily when it slices through air rather than flesh, and tries again. This swipe hooks Castiel’s shirt, yanking him sharply backwards.

            Castiel doesn’t think the ground feels quite so beautiful anymore when he lies sprawling on top of it with a monster crouching hungrily over him.

            The monster snaps its teeth together, tilting its head almost horizontally as it peers at Castiel. It’s a miracle that the others haven’t yet come running, but Castiel isn’t about to question his luck and instead feels surreptitiously around him for a weapon of some kind.

            His fingers are just closing around a fallen branch when the monster chirrups a curious inquiry.

            It leans forward slightly, snuffling at Castiel’s face not unlike a dog. Castiel forces himself not to flinch away from the crackled flesh of its cheeks. It locks eyes with the man pinned beneath it.

            Castiel cannot describe to himself what happens next. He stares into the pinched red eyes of the monster, and in their depths he sees his own reflection. A broken, lost soul. Humanity clashing with the struggle to maintain what it was made to do. An endless war trapped within the confines of this creature’s mind, and Castiel knows exactly what that’s like.

            He lets go of the branch.

            The creature’s gaze flicks over to the branch, as if it knows what Castiel’s just sacrificed, and lets out a conflicted croon. It begins to stand, and Castiel does the same, shocked that he’s being let free.

            Then the creature is barreled over by another one of its kind, who hisses and rips the former’s throat out. The second turns and screams a battle cry.

            Castiel doesn’t waste another second. He turns and sprints. The beating of the blood in his ears is almost louder than the scuttling and screeching of the monster pack chasing him.

            His feet grind up the earth as he runs, spreading debris behind him. He dodges trees, ducking under the lower-hanging branches on reflex. He doesn’t realize that he can no longer hear the monsters until he checks over his shoulder and sees that they’ve stopped running, and are staring at him with the closest approximation of smiles that they can manage.

            Castiel realizes exactly why when the ground disappears under his feet and he drops, arms spread like the wings he’s lost. He catches a glimpse of the frothy churn of waves, spinning much too far away below him. Then the water is a cradle, and he falls into her arms.

ﭷ

_Dean_

It’s hours later, but Sam’s words to him click into a loop around his head.

            _‘Cause it’s Cas, and I don’t think anyone else has ever meant more to him than you do._

He remembers his snapped response. _What the hell are you talkin’ about, Sam?_

_I’m just saying – Dean, are you blind? He –_

_No, man. We are so not doing this._

He’d swept out of the room with an angry huff, brushing off the argument in his swift escape. Sam hadn’t come by to talk to him, although Dean has heard his footsteps hovering hesitantly outside his door several times since then.

            Dean tries not to think about what Sam’s words might mean, but it’s like telling someone not to look down. Of course they’re going to, and of course he will too.

            _I don’t think anyone else has ever meant more to him than you do._

Dean wonders if it’s true. Then pinches himself for wondering. _Why should it matter what Cas thinks of me? Anyway, it’s not like that’s the most important matter at hand here. The guy’s in a friggin’ coma. We should be focusing on gettin’ him out, not… y’know, whatever._

The effort is useless and feeble. Dean remembers the burning of blue eyes on his back, the _Dean and I do share a more profound bond,_ the _has anyone but your closest kin ever done more for you?_ He remembers the sickening twist of worry when he’d been whisked away to the future and saw the barely-there shell that Castiel would become. He remembers the abandonment, the searching, the underlying anxiety of wondering whether the angel was even still alive, and the unfathomable flush of relief when they found each other. There’d been deep gouges scored in Dean’s soul, left behind by the memories of Hell, but Castiel had laid his hand, aglow with purity and goodness, and raised him from Perdition.

            Lying on a scratchy blanket and staring at the water-molded ceiling tiles of a trashy motel room, Dean feels a tugging in his heart that he’d never noticed before, but somehow knew had always been there.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Drowning is almost like flying.

            He is weightless. There is nothing above or below but an enormous expanse of blue, blue, _blue._

            There is no sound. The silence is both stifling and comforting, a gentle pressure on his ears that builds the deeper he sinks. His lungs burn the way they do whenever he takes a sharp dive in the stratosphere. The darkness that gathers at the corners of his eyes reminds him of the dizziness that comes when the wind takes him on a sudden turn.

            He exhales, and his breath is captured in a flurry of tiny bubbles that remind him of the stars burning millions, billions, trillions of miles away. They permeate the stillness of the water in their hurried rush to the surface, bursting and fizzling away to nothingness.

            He does not think to join them.

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean refuses to let himself revisit the thoughts that had crossed his mind the previous night. Instead, he wakes with renewed vigor, a surge of determination that he hasn’t felt since Castiel first fell ill.

            He stops in for a brief visit with the aforementioned, releasing a quiet sigh when he notes that the angel hasn’t moved in several days. Sam is sitting at Castiel’s side, dripping small amounts of water into his mouth and rubbing his throat to ensure he swallows.

            Dean hovers in the doorway for a few seconds, watching his brother and his angel, and despite the circumstances he has to smile. Sam glances up, catches Dean’s eye, and stands.

            “Three weeks, man,” he murmurs tiredly. “I don’t know how much longer we can keep this up.”

            The smile drops from Dean’s face. “Are you saying we should give up on him?”

            “No. No, of course not.” Sam rubs the drowsiness from his eyes and scratches absently at the base of his skull. “But we gotta do something. We can’t keep expecting him to just wake up one day.”

            Dean scoffs, wrapping his arms tighter around himself as if to block the truth in Sam’s words. “You think I don’t know that? I tried the angels. They’re not listening. Maybe if we weren’t livin’ in a crummy, post-apocalyptic universe where everyone and their grandmother is _dead_ , we could do somethin’ better than sit around with our thumbs up our asses. However, Heaven happens to want us gone, so we don’t have a single goddamn way to fix him. All we got is what you’ve studied about this thing. What the hell do you expect us to do about it?”

            Sam seems unaffected by, if not bored with, Dean’s tirade. He opens his mouth to respond, but is cut off by a sharp choking sound from the bed.

            Castiel is coughing up water. Floods of water that spill from his mouth and soak the sheets.

            “Jesus, Sam, how much water did you give him?” Dean shouts as the brothers scramble over to help. The liquid is being expelled as if there were an ocean inside Castiel’s body. The angel’s eyes are open and glazed, tears leaking out of their corners from the force of his coughs.

            “I don’t – I think – this can’t have been from today,” Sam pants in between thumps to Castiel’s back. There’s a sickeningly brackish scent in the air. “Do you smell that?”

            “What?” The outrageous confusion is clear in Dean’s voice, as well as the distraction. The hunter is trying desperately  to stop Castiel’s fit, shoving Sam’s hands away as he lays the other man back down again and pumps his chest.

            “It’s like brine, or some – salt water!”

            “ _What the hell are you –_ ”

            “Dean, he’s _drowning._ ” Sam blurts out, staring down at their friend in horror. “In his mind, it’s all in his mind, but he’s drowning and it’s happening in real life too, and we – we can’t help him, Dean!”

            Dean can’t tear his eyes from Castiel’s spasming body, nor stop himself from flinching at each watery gasp. He’s still grasping at Castiel frantically, and there’re hooks in his heart pulling it in every direction. In a bizarre moment of temporary insanity, he vividly recalls the last time that Castiel drowned, when the leviathans sacrificed his vessel in the municipal waters of Bootbuck, Kansas. He doesn’t know whether he’s going to be sick, cry, or both.

            When Castiel’s breath fades and he finally stills, and the water lessens to a trickle and then to a stop, Dean settles for, “Castiel, you dumb son of a bitch.”

ﭷ

_Castiel_

_The darkness is a symphony, luring him in with the elegant whispers of violins and the sweet, delicate plucking of piano keys. It starts out soft. A tickle in the back of his mind, a gentle sigh exhaled at the end of a lengthy note. It builds. The chorus sings praise in his ear, the tempo increases as the gloom begins to drape over his eyes like a grand black curtain marking the closing stage of a play. The orchestra hums in his veins, a warm susurration that fills him to the brim with airy pleasure._

_He falls into the darkness, wrapping himself in the silken intimacy of its touch. He listens to the lullaby until it blesses him with sleep, and the sea breathes water into him at last._

Until the light crashes into him like a freight train, and he wakes with a heavy inclination to never look at the sun again. It burns him so hotly that his eyes water painfully.

            Castiel finds himself on a graveled shore, with stones poking harshly into the knobs of his spine, and the pulse of the ocean rocking over his legs. His throat and chest feel sore, and he can barely hear his own thoughts over the pounding in his head. There’s a distinctly salty taste in his mouth that makes his stomach turn with the warning of bile.

            He sits up, shivering under the weighty drag of his waterlogged clothes. The last thing he remembers is plummeting into the wet mouth of the bay, which now laps tamely at his toes like a pup. The current must have pulled him to shore, though it’s a wonder Castiel wasn’t lost to the water before it reached him. His lungs ache, begging him not to remind them of their struggle to draw oxygen where there was none.

            The top of the cliff reaches absurdly high, and Castiel gives another subdued shudder. The impact alone could’ve killed him instantly. He stands, glancing around to assure himself that none of the monsters are sneaking about. There’s a distant, breezy call from high above, but it’s far enough away that Castiel feels safe for now.

            He realizes with a sagging weariness to his bones that he hasn’t slept in some time, if you discount the time spent drifting between unconsciousness and death. With a last pensive look around, he lets out a low groan and begins to set up camp.

ﭷ

_Dean_

The job comes with losses. He’s known that since he was four years old.

            The list of the people he’s lost is long, too long. And yet, faced with the limp body of his fallen angel, this feels like the first death he’s ever experienced.

            Sam’s face is screwed up with grief, but Dean knows that his own is carefully blank. Every is emotion safely tucked away in a neat little box, and that box tied with a bow and stowed away under a metaphorical bed. Dean knows someday he will have to open that box, deal with the pain in a healthy manner, but for now he’ll do what he always does. Drink away his feelings and stew in slowly simmering anger.

            Sam runs a frustrated hand through his hair, standing very abruptly. Dean continues staring at Castiel’s pale face, and a dull ache begins to throb like clockwork in his chest.

            “We should… we should give him a hunter’s funeral,” Sam starts, and Dean visibly wilts at the word ‘funeral’. “He was more like us than like them, in… in the end.” His voice breaks, and he says no more.

            Dean’s eyes are fixed on Castiel’s graying lids, silently begging those startling blue irises to blink open one more time. _If there’s a God… bring Cas back,_ he prays vehemently. _Please bring Cas back. He doesn’t deserve this. Let him live, oh God, please just bring him back._ His lips mouth along silently, forming the words he can’t bring himself to say aloud. _He’s my best friend, he’s my angel, and I don’t – I just can’t do this without him. I’m asking you. Please._

All at once, Castiel inhales. Almost imperceptibly, but Dean catches it, and the tears that track their way down his cheeks then are of relief.

            “Sam, look!” he cries, and his brother is laughing now, jubilation clear on his face.

            Castiel’s eyes slide halfway open, and he’s staring straight at Dean. The hunter whispers a quiet _thank you_ to whoever had been listening in upstairs.

            The blue hides itself once again as Castiel’s lashes flutter shut. Dean knows he isn’t cured, he isn’t all the way back, but at least he’s alive. He reaches over to grab at Castiel’s hand, reassuring himself with the steady warmth glowing under the angel’s skin.

            _Thank you,_ he repeats. _Thank you for bringing him back to me._

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel dozes uneasily, spooked by every sharp noise that cracks through the forest like lightning. When he finally drifts off into a deeper slumber, he is plagued by nightmares of the creatures, those so alike and yet so different from him. Interspersed within these images are those he knows well: the red-haired girl, the kind-faced brother, the green-eyed man. _Home_ is written on these faces, and he feels a longing for it so sharp it’s as though he’s been gutted.

            He shifts, tossing like a child sleeping through a hurricane. Except that the rain pounding on the roof is replaced with demons screaming his name, and the howl of the wind turns into the whispered echo of a prayer. There’s no way to shut out the noises, no way to silence the animalistic wails of the monsters roaming both his mind and this land, craving and seeking and crooning and putting a face to the poisoned inkiness blotting Castiel’s soul.

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean sleeps by Castiel that night. He and Sam had shared a celebratory beer, made a few jokes, showered off the salt water, but Dean still feels the stickiness of worry scratching at him. So he pulls up the armchair, rests his feet on Castiel’s lap, and descends into his quiet dreamscape.

            He is still resting when a soft brush of wings announces a new arrival, a man who promptly shakes Dean awake, only to nearly get hit in the face by a flying fist.

            “Calm down, Dean.”

            Dean gropes for the lamp on the nightstand, flicking it on to cast a pallid yellow light on the man crouching over him.

            “Inias? Jesus, it’s like four in the morning. What the hell are you doing here?”

            The angel ignores his blatant blasphemy and instead turns his grave expression to Castiel. “I’m here to help.”

            Dean blinks, sure he’s still dreaming. “Come again?”

            “You were right, Dean. What you said, everything was true. I was just too ignorant to see it at the time. Castiel is my brother. I don’t know when I forgot that. And he did much for us; every decision he made, he was trying to help.”

            “Debatable,” Dean can’t help but mutter.

            Inias looks at him sharply. “No, Dean. He made mistakes, that much is irrefutable. But at the time, he believed he was doing the right thing by everyone. The right thing by you. Hurting you has never been his intention.”

            Dean is neither in the mood nor state of mind to discuss past issues he may have had with Castiel. “Right, okay. So what’s your plan? We’ve tried everything. He’s just not wakin’ up.”

            The angel nods. “It’s… a bit difficult to explain. See, after you first confronted me, I did try to seek Castiel out. But he seemed to have created a bit of a shield for himself while the virus was busy adapting to its host. It didn’t happen as quickly as it would’ve with a human, as angels have a completely different set of genes. In that time, he was unable to be tracked. It –”

            “Wait.” Dean holds up his hands, stopping Inias midsentence. “What do you mean, _tracked_? The guy’s been here the whole time.”

            “That’s correct, in a sense. What we see here is his body, his physical shell, more or less. But his actual self, that’s somewhere else entirely. His mind formed an entire universe, completely separate from ours. Something like another dimension, or another existence. It’s unclear to me what he was experiencing in those first few days, but –”

            “He would scream,” Dean fills in helpfully, if a bit grimly. “For hours. Fits and seizures, too.”

            Inias bobs his head slowly, as if he’d been expecting that bit of news. “That’s what I suspected. The virus was making him attack himself, through hallucinations. It was self-inflicted, which I suppose is the purpose of the disease.”

            “Yeah, Sam and I figured that out, at least,” Dean tells Inias, feeling a small burst of pride that they’d gotten it right. He pauses, then continues. “He told me I took his wings.”

            The disturbed look on Inias’ face is of little comfort to Dean. “The removal of an angel’s wings is… not unheard of, but it’s a punishment reserved for only the… blackest sheep. I don’t think there’s even an earthly comparison for such a – ” The angel takes a deep breath, and Dean hopes he imagines the slight tremor in it.

            “Is there any way to get them back?” Dean asks slowly, after a minute of silence.

            Inias is quiet for a moment longer. “Curing him, I would presume. He’s not truly Fallen, not just yet. I can still the shadows of his grace lingering within him. But only he can bring them back, and he must do it willingly.”

            Dean looks at the sleeping man. He tries to imagine he can see the outline of his wings, tucked close to his body and yet still as glorious as that first sneaking glance in the barn had been.

            “Anyway, once the virus adjusted, he broke free from that shield. He created another reality, a much more tangible one. I was able to track his location, but not precisely. I’m not sure where exactly in this version of his mindscape you’ll end up in, so – ”

            “Wait, what? _Me_?”

            “I can’t do it, Dean. The virus would rip me to shreds, now that it’s learned how to disarm an angel. I can send you in there, but after that, you’re on your own.”

            “What the hell am I supposed to do inside Cas’ _mind?_ ”

            “You’ll have to watch yourself. Carefully. Castiel won’t be the only living creature in there. Follow the mark. It’ll help. Once you find him, bring him into the sea.”

            Dean blinks rapidly, shaking his head sluggishly. “Follow what mark? Into the sea? What does that even mean? _God_ , I’m _so_ done with all this cryptic angelic – whatever! Jesus, can’t I have like, a MapQuest or something?”

            Inias stares at him with such deadpan cynicism that Dean doesn’t know whether to laugh or back away. “Dean, this is serious. Find him. Watch for monsters. Bring him into the sea. And don’t stay too long, or the virus will adapt to a human presence, and destroy you.”

            “Oh yeah, thanks, that’s totally reassuring. You’re like a walking ‘here be dragons’ sign. Do you have _any_ good news?”

            “If you get him out safely, he’ll be cured. Restored to life. He’ll stop being _this_ , whatever _this_ is.”

            Dean raises his eyebrows and claps his hands once. “Okay. So, worth it. When are we doin’ it?”

            Inias raises his hand in answer, and Dean nearly trips scrambling away from him. “Whoa! What about Sam? I gotta tell him what’s going on.”

            “I’ll tell Sam. This is urgent. I’m afraid if he continues in this place…” Inias shoots an anxious glance in Castiel’s direction. “He may not be able to leave.”

            Dean takes a moment to consider. He and Sam have never left in such circumstances without saying goodbye to one another. And if it’s as risky as Inias says, there’s a chance neither he nor Castiel might make it back. But Dean turns his gaze to Castiel, and suddenly nothing’s more important than getting him back where he belongs. Getting him back home.

            “Okay,” he says at last. “Beam me up, Scotty.”


	7. Chapter Seven

_Cometh the hour,_

_Cometh the man._

_– Anonymous_

_Castiel_

It’s a sudden shift in the atmosphere that wakes Castiel.

            Something has changed, something that causes the air to twist and snap sharply.

            Something has arrived. Castiel lifts his head to the sky and smiles.

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean lands, and immediately tumbles forward onto his hands and knees. The queasy feeling that always accompanies a trip on the angel expressway rocks in his stomach, and he takes a moment to steady his breathing.

            He’s in a forest. Somewhere in the distance, he hears waves crashing on a hidden shore. For a false reality constructed by an unnamed yet fatal disease in the mind of a maybe/maybe not fallen angel, it sure is damn chilly. Dean wraps his jacket tighter around himself and continues on his way.

            This place is bigger than he had expected. When Inias had said it was like another dimension, Dean wasn’t sure he had meant the middle-of-freakin’-nowhere. He doesn’t even know where to begin searching.

            _Follow the mark._

            “What mark? There’s no mark!” Dean begins a slow circular spin, tipping his head to the sky. “Inias! There’s no friggin’ mark! Nothing but trees!”

            He has turned nearly three-quarters of his circle when a sudden throbbing begins in his left shoulder. It’s sharp, warm, and causes him to hiss in surprise.

            Dean shrugs off the jacket and rolls up his sleeve, prodding the tender scar tissue that is Castiel’s handprint.

            _Follow the mark._

“Oh…” Dean breathes, hardly daring to believe it. He takes a few experimental steps forward, and the scar grows a fraction warmer. He moves to his right, and the temperature cools.

            Dean throws back his head and laughs.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel is running.

            He is not running from anything. He is running to something.

            To someone.

            He has no idea if he’s going in the right direction, and at the same time, finds he doesn’t care.

            He knows that as long as he runs, he will arrive eventually. That is all that matters.

            So he runs hard and he runs fast, and the monsters watch him, and begin to follow.

ﭷ

_Sam_

“Are you sure they’re okay?” Sam asks for quite possibly the millionth time.

            Inias shows no impatience, only smiles mildly. “Yes. For now, they’re okay.”

            Sam’s not loving that _for now_ , but he supposes it’s the best he’s going to get, considering the situation. He sits in the armchair beside Castiel’s bed – well, Dean and Castiel’s now, seeing as they’re not about to lug another bed in here and Inias says the connection will weaken if there is greater distance between them. Under any other circumstances, Sam would be snickering and taking pictures of the two.

            Castiel is on his side, facing Dean, looking for all the world like he’s just settled in for a power nap. Dean is on his back, casually slack-jawed and one arm hanging slightly off the bed. Some of the intensity and weariness is drained from his face in sleep, for which Sam is grateful.

            “How long should this take?” Sam asks, after a lengthy silence that makes his whole body itch.

            Inias is thoughtful in his answer. “I’m not sure. Time works differently in the mind. It could be minutes, hours, days. It’s dependent on many factors.”

            Sam bites his lip, fishing for another line of conversation. “What about Heaven?”

            “What about them?”

            “Do they know you’re doing this?”

            Inias pauses, then looks down and swallows. “No. But the Host is vast, and no one really keeps track of where all the angels are at any given time. All the same, my garrison could choose to check up on me whenever they like, and they would discover my true objective.”

            Sam casts him a concerned glance. “What would they do to you?”

            “They would view this as a minor brand of treachery. They might bar me from missions, or strip my status in the garrison, or imprison me for some time. I don’t believe they would harm me. Many of the angels still believe Castiel had good intentions, and do want to help him. It is simply because the Host decided not to intercede in these events that they won’t.”

            “Yeah, why is that?” Sam prompts. There is no anger in his voice, though he _is_ angry with the angels for choosing not to help them with the plague. Anger won’t save his friends. Anger won’t bring Lucy back.

            A shadow falls over Inias’ face. He sits on the floor with his back against the wall, stretching his long legs out and running a careful hand through his dark hair.

            “The angels are tired. They don’t want to meddle around in the affairs of humanity anymore. Sometimes… sometimes I think they let the virus loose simply so they wouldn’t have anything to worry about once everyone was gone.”

            Sam blinks, shock zapping him as sharply as any spark might. “You really think they’d do that?”

            “We are warriors. Angels were made to be unsympathetic, emotionless beings, to do our orders without blinking. No hesitation. The Host would gladly murder every single living creature on this planet if it came to their benefit. Yes. I really think they’d do that.”

            “But you guys could fix it!” Sam stands abruptly, pacing, shaking out his limbs in his burst of frustration and nerves. “I mean, any one of you guys could – you could just snap your fingers and make the virus disappear!”

            “It wouldn’t bring back those who have already passed.”

            “It’d save the ones that are still here.”

            Neither of them dare breathe in the pregnant pause that follows Sam’s retort.

            Finally, Inias slowly shakes his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m doing this much, and it’ll have to be enough. To bring back a comatose angel, maybe, but reverse the damage inflicted by Heaven itself? That’s asking for a death sentence.”

            Sam lets out his breath in a low sigh. They revert to silence, Sam watching his brother and his friend, Inias staring guiltily at the golden red patterns on the motel walls.

            The hopelessness that hangs in the air, parenthesized neatly by the curved bodies of the hunter and his angel, crushes down upon them with a vengeance.

ﭷ

_Dean_

The warmth is fading fast, and panic heaves warningly in Dean’s stomach.

            “Stop _moving_ , damn it,” he growls, speaking to the open air as if the breeze will carry his words to Castiel. He zigzags rapidly, testing directions and sprinting when he feels a surge in heat.

            Dean’s heart is in his throat, a bizarre mix of anxiety and eagerness welling up inside him like a balloon. His pulse vibrates through his entire body, its drumming rhythm providing a white noise background to his roaring thoughts.

            He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed Castiel until this very moment. Hope and a sort of twisted excitement propel him forward, and a grin creeps its way onto his face.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel slows to a stop, chest aching and feet screaming. His lungs burn for oxygen and he complies, wheezing until the pain fades to a dull throb.

            _Human,_ he thinks. _So human._

Tears of frustration prick at his eyes. The monsters watch from the sidelines.

            He feels dizzy, his mind buzzing like a beehive. He settles down on a nearby log, letting a raw shout of distress tear its way out of his throat. There is nothing to do but sit and wait.

ﭷ

_Dean_

The scar has turned uncomfortably warm. Dean welcomes it, pursuing the track of heat slowly, knowing he must be close by now. This entire place has him on edge, buzzing with anticipation. There’s a prickling on the back of his neck, like he’s being watched, but when he turns to check he sees nothing. The sea continues to make its music in the distance, the leaves rustle as the wind sets them to dance.

            Dean turns his attention back to the scar, which is pulsating in time with his heartbeat, and red as a cherry.

            “Come on, Cas,” he whispers, dry twigs snapping under him as he makes his way forward. It feels like there’s a ball, right in the middle of his chest, making his muscles tense and his feet stumble.

            From a little ways ahead, there comes a shout.

            Dean launches into a run, ignoring the scar’s spike in warmth that calls protest, and emerges into a small clearing.

            There, on the other side, sitting neatly on a fallen tree, is Castiel.

            Upright. Awake. And with those infinite blue eyes that Dean ached for so much staring straight at him.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

The relief that drops in Castiel’s stomach is a bomb. It fills him so heartily he believes he might burst with it.

            Dean is there, _his_ Dean, not wing-shredding Dean. Those bottle green eyes – they’re streaked with gold and brown too, how did he not notice before? – that he’s been dreaming of for what feels like decades, they’re looking at him and Castiel swears he can see Dean’s very soul pouring from them.

            For a moment, he’s a statue. He doesn’t know what to say. His throat is parchment; he doesn’t believe he could speak even if he tried.

            Castiel doesn’t remember moving, but he’s suddenly standing right in front of Dean. He reaches out, brushing his fingers over the cotton of Dean’s shirt, stroking the supple leather of his jacket. His hand inches upward, hovering mere millimeters from Dean’s face.

            “It’s really you,” he breathes, and feels the air from Dean’s shaky exhale whisper over his fingers.

            “Yeah,” Dean answers, and is that a tremor in his voice? “It’s me. And… it’s you.”

            A laugh bubbles from Castiel’s throat, and though it’s out of place and strangely high-pitched, it’s all he can do to stop the unexpected bout of hysteria.

            “How?” Castiel asks, speaking around a grin that stretches so wide it hurts. “How did you – ”

            “Inias,” Dean interrupts, too fast, much too fast, but Castiel can’t think much more than _Dean is here, he’s actually here, he’s here to save me._ “Sent me to – do you know where we are?”

            Castiel stares at him for a long time before answering. He laughs again, but this one is dry, tired, and mirthless. “Isn’t it obvious, Dean? We’re in Hell.”

ﭷ

_Dean_

_Hell._ The word rings in Dean’s ears.

            He takes a closer look at Castiel. Sees the dark circles under his eyes, the untreated and dirty scrapes, a purpling bruise dominating his temple and sneaking into his hairline.

            “Where else would we be?” Castiel adds, barking another ugly laugh. It looks like it hurts him.

            “Cas, we’re… we’re not in Hell,” Dean tells him, straining to speak and wondering vaguely why his throat feels so tight all of a sudden. “Do you remember what happened?” _Do you remember what you did?_       

            Castiel looks at him, detecting the very slight hint of accusation in Dean’s tone, his eyes darkening. “I… I remember Lucy,” he struggles. “I remember sadness. Emptiness.”

            There is a tiny creature inside of Dean’s chest, and it is dripping ice on his heart.

            “I remember you. You said I deserved a drink. So I got one. I got a lot.”

            Dean doesn’t want to listen to this anymore. He shakes his head, wanting, needing Castiel to stop.

            “I remember walking. Far. I remember thinking _too much_ , and then _nothing at all_.”

            The creature in his chest stretches and stands up, yawning so widely that it splits Dean in half. He feels faint, and manages to let out a tiny, “You coward.”

            Castiel blinks, and there it is, that head tilt that Dean would normally find endearing but right now just sparks a flame of irritation in him. “What?”

            “Coward,” Dean repeats, louder this time. He is flame, burning with anger, seething with betrayal, aching to throw his sparks on Castiel. “You just took off. You left! You were going to kill yourself! Are you _serious_? You couldn’t handle a damn shooting? We’re _surrounded_ by death. Day and night. That’s the world we live in now, but you wanted out the _second_ someone close to us died?”

            Castiel looks absolutely bewildered, and Dean seizes frantically onto that fact, beginning to pace rapidly. “What – you didn’t think about how it’d affect us? You have no _idea_ ­– we – I was going out of my _mind_ , Cas, waiting for you to wake up, watching you to make sure you wouldn’t sneak off to the armory like Lucy – for weeks, _weeks_ , Sam and I were – we – _devastated_ , all because you couldn’t take – not even a damn _goodbye_ – ”

            Dean is sputtering now, unable to spit out the words he wants over the sharp pounding in his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Castiel take a step towards him, and without thinking he turns and blindly lashes out. His fist connects with Castiel’s jaw, sending a shooting pain up his arm – he punched wrong, crookedly, and his knuckles scold him by rubbing raw.

            Castiel stumbles, but doesn’t fall. He lifts an incredulous hand to his face, staring at his accuser with a look that Dean can only describe as more hurt than pained. “I didn’t – ”

            “No, you didn’t,” Dean bites in scathingly, but his anger is quickly fading at the sight of the red mark he left. After a pause, “You okay?”

            “I’ll live,” Castiel remarks, in that way that could be construed as either dry sarcasm or honest blandness.

            Dean drags a hand over his face, speaking through his fingers. “You got infected. Back on Earth, you’re in a coma. Real nasty one. You scream a lot. I tried to get the angels to help you. Inias answered. Said he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Then he showed up again, and agreed. He sent me into your brain. That’s where we are now. He said this is a – a mindscape or something, and that the virus is making you attack yourself.”

            Castiel looks at him with an unreadable expression on his face. Then, “Devastated?”

            Dean nearly cries out in exasperation. “Really? _Seriously_? That’s your focus?”

            “I never imagined you’d be devastated.”

            “How the hell do you expect me to react, Cas? You’re – you’re my best friend, okay?” He blurts the words like he’s ashamed of them. He struggles to redeem himself. “I mean, who else would I complain to if you were gone? I – ”

            Dean stops at the ghost of a smile on Castiel’s face. “Shut up,” he grumbles. “Okay, so I don’t want you dead. Sue me. Happy? Bastard.”

ﭷ

_Sam_

It’s been two days since Dean went under. Inias had promised to watch over them, so Sam had decided to stretch his legs and go out on patrol. He walks with Jack on one side and their technician, Tyler, on the other. Tyler’s girlfriend, Maia, takes the back.

            They’re wearing their masks, and after a few seconds, Jack’s voice buzzes in Sam’s ear.

            _“Hey. How’s Dean doing?”_

_“Uh, good. He’s good. They’re good. Everything’s…”_

_“Good?”_ Jack fills in, though his voice is sour rather than amused.

            _“I’m doing my best, Jack. They’ll be back.”_

Jack sighs, and the sound crackles across Sam’s speakers. _“Yeah. I know. Sorry, I just… after Lucy, I don’t feel safe anymore. We can’t keep this up forever.”_

 _“Stop being so damn pessimistic,”_ Maia interrupts, her clear voice cutting through the fog of dejection that had been cast over the other two men. _“Our job is to save people, and we can’t do that when you two are busy whining.”_

Sam lets out a strangled laugh. _“You sound like Dean.”_

_“Good. At least one of us does.”_

Tyler intercedes quickly when he catches the look on Sam’s face. _“Alright, guys, let’s just try to finish this patrol, okay? Put your claws away.”_

Maia harrumphs and takes the lead, hitting Sam’s arm with the butt of her gun as she shoves past him. Sam stares after her, and Tyler puts his hand on the other man’s shoulder. _“Don’t take it personally. She’s just scared is all. We’ve got two of our leaders in comas. That tends to put people on edge.”_

 _“Yeah, well, I’m still here,”_ Sam mutters, shouldering his rifle with a grim expression. _“We’ll be okay.”_

_I hope._

ﭷ

_Dean_

The anger has long left him, swirling away like bathwater in the relief that he feels having Castiel by his side again. They are walking through the forest, picking their way amongst fallen branches and thorns. A comfortable silence has settled over the two. To Dean, it feels like a blanket.

            A sharp inhale comes from his left, and he turns to see Castiel inspecting his thumb, where a long gash is tracing a bloody line down his hand.

            “Dude, you are all kinds of messed up,” Dean snorts, and Castiel glances up at him without amusement.

            “I’m sorry, is my newfound humanity inconveniencing you?” he snaps back.

            Dean blinks. “Calm down, Cas. I wasn’t insulting you. Just meant that –”

            “No, I know exactly what you meant. We haven’t all had years to get used to the fact that we can get hurt, Dean. Do you think I want this – this –” Castiel waves his injured hand, pointing at it and at various other wounds decorating his body. “Bothersome _pain_? I can’t heal myself. So, sorry. You’re going to have to deal with it.”

            Dean stops, although Castiel continues on his path, his glare stubbornly fixed on the ground. “Hey,” Dean calls after him, irritation trickling into his voice. “You don’t get to be mad at me, okay? This is all your own damn fault.  You’re the one who went out and offered yourself up on a silver platter! Don’t take it out on me; admit that you made a mistake, and suck it up!”

            Castiel whirls in place, his eyes flaring with spiteful fury. Dean thinks he hears thunder. “Maybe it wasn’t a mistake! I cared about her – she was _family_ , Dean, I thought you of all people would understand! You would’ve done the same thing in my place, you _have_ done the same thing, or have you forgotten the reason you went to Hell?”

            Dean is about to shout back a scathing retort when a triumphant battle cry interrupts him. He turns his head so fast his neck hurts, spotting a creature standing at the foot of a hill a few dozen feet to their right. It’s the monster from his dream.

            _Castiel won’t be the only living creature in there._

More creatures creep into view, behind the first. Their grinning teeth are bared.

            Dean locks eyes with Castiel, all animosity forgotten. There is something more than fear in Castiel’s eyes – there is panic. Complete and utter panic.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

            The wind, which had been a light breeze until now, picks up. The trees around them begin to sway with the force of the gust, and for one wild moment, it seems to Castiel like the whole world is tipping over.

            “ _Run!_ ” he hears in the distance, over the ringing in his ears. In one second, he catches a glimpse of Dean looking at him, so far away he’s the size of Castiel’s fingernail, and in the next he’s right in front of him.

            A hand grabs his, and they’re stumbling rather than running, fighting against the wall of wind. Very suddenly, Castiel’s mind snaps back into sharpness, and he picks up the pace.

            “We might need to fight them!” he shouts, picking a branch off the ground with his free hand as they pass it. “Get a weapon! Anything!”

            Dean snatches a branch as well, knocking it against the trunk of the nearest tree; it splits, creating a wickedly sharp point on one end, like a spear. Castiel gets the idea and does the same with his own.

            The sounds of pursuit behind them are drums in Castiel’s head. They melt into the pounding of his heartbeat, though his pulse is so loud it feels like it’s beating down on him from the outside. An upsurge in the gale raging against them knocks him into Dean. The pain from their convergence – an elbow to the ribs – seeps like ice down Castiel’s front.

            “Cas, we can’t run forever. We have to attack!” Dean yells, and his voice draws Castiel back into his body. They stop running. The warmth leaves Castiel’s hand as Dean grips his spear tightly, swiveling to face the oncoming monsters. Castiel turns just as the first wave reaches them, and then he sees nothing but red.

            His spear digs into something soft, and he hears a bellow in his ear that marks a good hit. The spear slides out slicked with blood, and the monster he’d stabbed lets out a snarl before backing off, wary now.

            Another creature approaches from Castiel’s left, and he chooses to use the spear as a club instead, beating into its skull until the thing resembles ground meat rather than a face. Still, it just snaps its teeth, its eyes glinting as it whines quietly and joins its packmate.

            Castiel runs to help Dean, whose chosen victim has several holes through its head and chest. Yet it continues to face them, on its hands and knees like a growling dog.

            “The damn thing won’t die!” Dean cries when Castiel reaches him.

            “I don’t think we can kill them,” Castiel mutters around a grimace. “Just show them we can hurt them. That’s going to have to be enough for now.”

            Dean huffs indignantly, but starts backing away anyway. The reluctance is clear on his face. He doesn’t want to leave anything _almost_ dead.

            “Come on,” Castiel says, grabbing Dean’s arm. They keep walking backward, wondering whether the monsters might spring again, but they just sit and stare menacingly at them. Once they’ve put enough distance between them to breathe easily again, the two turn and run for shelter.

            ﭷ

_Dean_

“What _are_ those things?” Dean asks at last; the question had been burning at him since his nightmare.

            “I’m not sure. If this really is my mind, they could be anything. I would guess that they’re representations of my darker self.” Castiel shrugs, as if that thought doesn’t bother him in the least.

            “Inner demons,” Dean comments, and his dry amusement is obvious. “Literally. Lovely.”

            Castiel doesn’t answer, doesn’t make a sound until they find a cave; or, more appropriately, a hole covered by two boulders. The entrance is just barely big enough for them to get in, but the inside is spacious, if musty.  Dean shakes his head as the sudden lack of wind pressing on his eardrums makes them pop. He sits, propping his head against the wall of the cave.

            “This should work, at least until they lose interest,” Castiel murmurs, his voice echoing deeply off the rocks. “If they haven’t already.”

            Dean gives a short nod. “Then I’m going to get some shut-eye while I can.”

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel knows that Dean has already dropped off to sleep, and that he should too. But he sits by his friend, knees pulled up to his chest, wondering what is going on and when they’re going to get out of this mess.

            Dean hasn’t told him anything more about how he got here. Just that Inias sent him. Castiel doesn’t know how they’re going to get back. He can barely grasp the concept of where they are.

            _So this is my mind,_ Castiel thinks. _Dark, cold, and full of monsters. Figures._

Outside, the leaves whisper their laughter. He hears the sea roaring far away, and it sounds like it’s speaking to him. _Cas-ti-el, are you well?_

 _Of course I am,_ Castiel responds, then narrows his eyes. Why is he talking to the sea? The logical thing to do is to ignore it.

            _Cas-ti-el, how can you tell?_

Castiel almost keeps his promise. Almost. _Dean is here. I’m safe with him._

The sea laughs, a rumbling sound that vibrates Castiel’s chest. _Cas-ti-el, you know you fell._

 _Yes,_ Castiel thinks uneasily. _But I’m safe. I am safe. Right?_

 _Cas-ti-el,_ the sea answers, and then it floods the cavern and pulls him under. _Welcome to Hell._

ﭷ

_Sam_

Sam is sitting, reading, with his feet propped on Dean and Castiel’s bed when he hears it.

            A low wailing, from Castiel.

            Inias is by the bed in an instant, face tight with apprehension. Castiel’s eyes are closed, but his mouth is wide open in his keening. His nails dig into the sheets under him, and a light sheen of sweat covers his forehead.

            “What’s happening?” Sam asks in alarm as Castiel’s screams grow louder. The fallen angel claws at his skin, digging so deeply that beads of blood begin to appear at once.

            Inias lunges forward at the same time Sam does, and together they manage to keep Castiel from injuring himself further.

            “Something is wrong,” Inias breathes, his eyes betraying his despair.

            Castiel is strong in his struggling. He screeches out a few words in a language that means nothing to Sam. Judging by the way Inias’ face darkens, he assumes it is Enochian.

            “Something is very, very wrong.”


	8. Chapter Eight

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.

– Gerard Manley Hopkins, “No Worse, There Is None”

_Dean_

In the first moments that he is awake, Dean thinks he is back at the motel. The screaming, at least, is the same as before he arrived here.

            There are a few breaths of panic, where Dean’s eyes have not yet adjusted to the moldy darkness of the cave, and his vision is completely obscured. The screaming is coming from somewhere on his left, and Dean gropes blindly until his arms close around Castiel’s seizing body.

            Castiel is shouting words that Dean doesn’t understand, words that reverberate lowly in his throat and emerge in desperate growls.

            “ _Nach urh mals_ ,” Castiel cries, and Dean feels hot liquid splash on his forearms. “ _Tal van veh nach mals und gon droux_! _Zvmvi torzu sa gohon_! _Iehusoz, iehusoz_!”

            Dean finds himself pressing butterfly kisses to Castiel’s temple. Fear has her icy fingers in his chest, because he thought this part was over, he thought everything would be back to normal when they woke. Castiel is shaking his head, coughing and choking and trembling.

            “ _T nach van don gisg fam_ ,” Castiel sobs into Dean’s shoulder. “It hurts.”

            That, at least, Dean can understand.

ﭷ

_Sam_

“What was that? What was he saying?” Sam asks after he and Inias have restrained Castiel to the bed. Dean had flipped over in his rest, and one hand is now resting lightly over Castiel’s heart.

            Inias looks hesitant. There is clear confusion and worry warring on his face.

            “This is important,” Sam ventures after several drawn-out minutes of silence. “ _Really_ important.”

            “ _Zvmvi torzu sa gohon,_ ” Inias begins at last. Sam has a vague memory of hearing Castiel screaming the nonsensical syllables as they clipped the restraints shut. “‘The sea is rising, and it has spoken’. I have no idea what it means, but that’s what he said.”

Inias pauses, reluctant to continue. Sam urges him ahead with the raise of an eyebrow.

“And _iehusoz._ ‘Mercy’. He was begging for mercy.”

ﭷ

_Dean_

It’s a long time before Dean finally lets Castiel go. How long exactly, he has no idea. There are no nights here. The sun never wavers from its stationary noontime position. There are zero indicators of time progression apart from the creaking in Dean’s stiff muscles. Castiel has been silent a long time, but he is by no means asleep. He is staring at Dean with a ferocious desperation that makes the latter twitch.

            “What?” he finally blurts, if only to break the ballooning quiet, and flushes at the defensive note in his voice. He has the excuses ready on the tip of his tongue – the kisses didn’t mean anything, Cas. I was trying to calm you down, Cas. You imagined it, Cas.

            “Are you real?” Castiel’s voice is a tremor, and Dean blinks hard at the unexpected question.

            “I – um, yeah, Cas,” he answers as smoothly as he can – which is about as smooth as tripping into a pile of manure. Face first. Castiel’s eyelids flutter at the sound of his name. “You okay?”

            “I don’t know,” Castiel whispers, as if it’s the most miraculous thing in the world. “Dean,” – and there it is again, that bizarre eyelid flutter – “Dean, I’m on fire.”

            A chill sweeps down Dean’s spine, and his body gives way to a shiver so powerful that it forms a painful knot between his shoulder blades. “Cas – you’re not on fire. Look at me. You’re not on fire.”

            Castiel tilts his head, then nearly collapses forward as he puts his face mere centimeters from Dean’s own.

            “Yes, I am,” Castiel insists, and Dean feels a shiver of a different kind at the brush of the other man’s breath on his lips. “Dean, put it out. Can you put it out, please? It’s very hot.”

            “You’re acting pretty calm for someone who’s on fire,” Dean points out dully. He doesn’t know what else to say. This is a side of Castiel he’s never seen before, and it scares him. He has no idea what’s happening to his friend, no idea how to stop it, and it causes a fist of ice to take shape in his stomach.

            “I suppose I am,” Castiel muses thoughtfully, and promptly passes out.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel loves the way Dean says his name.

            Angels never take nicknames. They take pride in the names they were given at their creation. It’s part of their being, of their self, and taking part of it away would be the same as taking one of their wings. An angel would never be content with a bastardization of their given name.

            Castiel is different. He prefers the shortened version. It is warm, and comforting, and familiar. You are family, it says. You are important enough to warrant a nickname.

            Besides, _el_ means _of god_ , and Castiel’s not really _of god_ anyway.

            How appropriate, then.

            Dean says it very nicely, too. Castiel has watched his lips while he says it. From the click of his tongue on the first letter to the light susurration of the last, it has Castiel completely enchanted. He wishes Dean would say it all the time. Maybe he should record Dean saying it, so he can play it back when he gets sad. Or maybe he should spend his nights watching over Dean like he used to, and see if he says it in his sleep. Castiel tries saying it to himself, but it doesn’t sound right. It’s a Dean word, he decides.

            It is very hot, he realizes dimly. He doesn’t care. He wants to go back to thinking about names.

            Dean is a very nice name as well. It rhymes with green and lean and screen. What if Castiel saw a green Dean leaning on a screen?

            Why, that’d be a story to tell.

            _Cas._ Ah, there it is. Castiel could fall in love with the honeysuckle sweet sound of that word. _Cas?_

Hello, Dean. Are you here too? It’s nice here, isn’t it? A bit hot, though. Could use a breeze.

 _Cas, you okay?_ A small thrill passes through Castiel, and he thinks he smiles.

            Say it again, Dean?

_Jesus, you’re burnin’ up. I’ll be right back, okay?_

What? No. Don’t go. Say it again, Dean, say it again.

_I’m just going to get some water to cool you down. I’ll be back in two shakes._

Dean? Don’t leave, Dean.

            _Just… don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone._

Dean. Come back. Dean, don’t leave me, oh God, Dean, no, _don’t go_!

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean can feel the heat wafting off Castiel in suffocating waves. Alarm bells ring in his head as he climbs his way out of the cave and heads toward the sound of the shore. He’s not entirely sure Castiel won’t snap again and kill himself or something else equally ridiculous. He speeds up, melting into a quick jog. The trip takes less than five minutes, by Dean’s count.

            When he arrives at the beach, he strips out of his button-up, leaving on his undershirt and slinging his jacket over a rock for later. Reaching into his boot, he pulls out a small knife and begins to cut and rip the shirt into long bands. After, he cuts the spathes off a nearby pygmy palm tree and fills the bowl-shaped structures with water to take back to the cave. The sea is freezing, tattooing a pattern of goosebumps all over his bare skin. Dean is sure the only thing keeping the water from turning to ice is the current.

            Castiel has not moved when Dean returns to the cave. He lies still, breathing rapidly and shallowly, with eyes open just enough to show a sliver of color.

            “This’ll help you,” Dean murmurs, even though Castiel looks beyond hearing. He crouches beside the unconscious man and carefully unbuttons and removes Castiel’s shirt. After putting it to one side, he soaks the strips in seawater and places them on Castiel’s forehead and torso. There he leaves them, unable to do anything more than wait and watch.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel wakes to sticky, salt-soaked skin and Dean’s face leaning over him. In Castiel’s fevered haze, it looks like Dean’s a proper angel with white sunlight surrounding his head like a halo. Then Dean shifts and the blaze is gone, but the image is seared into Castiel’s mind.

            _Dean is no angel,_ Castiel thinks. _Angels are corrupt and greedy and mindless and everything they shouldn’t be. Dean is better than the angels. They should follow his example._

Dean stills beside him, hands hovering lightly over the wet bandages.

            _Dean cares for family and brotherhood. He looks after the innocent, and hunts malice. Every choice he makes is selfless and self-sacrificing and for the greater good. He is loyal and valiant and his lion heart brings light where his tragedies might have destroyed another. A true Righteous Man. The angels could learn quite a bit from Dean Winchester._

“Stop talking, Cas,” Dean says then, and Castiel realizes he’s been speaking aloud. Dean’s voice sounds strained. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

            Castiel reaches out, brushing his palm over stubble and soft lips and collarbones before resting at Dean’s heart.

“You are a star in a sea of tainted darkness,” he whispers, so quietly that Dean has to tilt his head forward to listen. Castiel feels the other man’s pulse jump erratically under his fingers, and knows exactly how he feels. “The biggest, and the brightest, and the most beautiful one there ever was.”

Slowly, Dean’s hand rises to cover Castiel’s, pressing it close to his chest. He says nothing, and Castiel continues.

“What is it about you that makes me question everything I’ve ever been so sure of?”

Dean exhales raggedly. He presses harder on Castiel’s hand, and answers in a shredded voice. “What is it about you that makes me so sure of everything I’ve ever questioned?”

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean has no idea what he would’ve done next, or if he would’ve done anything at all. The words he’d spoken had been drawn off his tongue as if caught by fishhooks, and Dean wonders wildly where he even managed the courage to speak them. A hand clenches deep inside his stomach; “deer in the headlights”, Sam would have said. There are impulses pinballing around his head, bells and whistles, jerking him every which way.

            But Dean doesn’t get a chance to do anything at all, because then there’s the sound of savage howling just outside the cave, and a ruined face peers in at them through the open gap.

ﭷ

_Sam_

No matter how much Sam had pestered him, Inias’ answers had remained the same – _no, I don’t know what happened to Castiel. No, I don’t know how it affects Dean. No, I don’t know if this changes the circumstances of their return._

 _What the hell_ do _you know?_ is what Sam had shouted at him, when lack of information had snapped his last nerve. And Inias had flapped off to escape the anger, leaving Sam standing alone and huffing and desperate.

            Sam sits on his bed now with his head in his hands. He gives a frustrated exclamation. There isn’t a single thought in his head that isn’t pumped with worry. With both Dean and Castiel out of commission, the full responsibility of running their ragtag group of survivors weighs heavily on his shoulders. Some are threatening to leave, others questioning his leadership abilities.

            Jack remains on his side, for now. Tyler as well. That, at least, brings Sam some degree of comfort.

            “What am I supposed to do, Dean?” he asks the ceiling. “Just… please get back here soon.”

ﭷ

_Dean_

“Cas!” Dean says in a low voice, prompting the other man to sit up. “Cas, can you run?”

            Castiel stares at him with bleary eyes, and Dean’s heart sinks. The moment of rough lucidity has faded. “Run,” the former angel repeats, drawing out the word.

            “Yeah, Cas, run. Come on. Get up,” Dean struggles to lift his companion onto his feet, swaying when Castiel leans heavily against him.

            “Up,” is his answer.

            Dean draws his knife, shifting his shoulders. “Don’t pass out on me now, Cas. I need you.”

            “You,” Castiel responds dazedly, running his fingers down Dean’s spine.

            The monster ahead of them screeches, and Dean takes it as a cue to lunge forward. He cuts forward straight into the beast’s sternum, and it growls in pain and begins to back up. Before it’s out of reach, Dean stabs it through the eye. The red bulb bursts and the monster whips its head to dislodge the knife. It scurries a few feet back.

            There’s enough room now for Dean to make it out of the mouth of the cave. He drags Castiel with him and begins to run without sparing another glance at the monster. It wails behind them, but doesn’t give chase. Dean doesn’t dare risk getting caught, and continues running.

            He doesn’t stop until Castiel moans lowly from behind.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

The world is spinning. Castiel stops his running – foolish thing, running. Why is he running? He thinks maybe he’s an angel again. When he was an angel, he was always in tune with the planet. He could see navigation lines etched over the ground, constellation charts dictated on the sky, feel the buzzing of life just underneath the surface of the Earth. It feels a bit like this does now; only he is not spinning to the east, but in circles.

            He looks up. Maybe if he can catch sight of the sun, he can orient himself. See again the path of light it follows every day. Instead, his gaze remains fixed on the trees, which have begun to melt. They drip and pop as they liquefy. Castiel’s breath comes fast.

            “Help,” he croaks, but hears nothing. Everything is silent. There is no sound.

            Then there are arms around him, and he turns to see green eyes looking at him. The mouth under them is moving, forming words that Castiel can’t hear. He can read only one of them, spoken over and over. _Cas. Cas. Cas._

Castiel’s mind stretches and snaps back. _Dean,_ he thinks, and slumps into the familiar grip.

            Castiel clings to Dean as the ground gives way beneath him and begins to splash in grassy waves against his feet. The dead leaves he stumbles on crack like thunder overhead, and every blink is a lightning strike. He doesn’t know whether he is moving forward or backward. He doesn’t know if he’s moving at all.

            Dean shouts something else, but Castiel can only watch as the words lift and swirl just out of reach. Their sharp points and smooth curves laugh at him unkindly.

            _Cas. Cas. Cas._

“Dean,” Castiel tries, and the sound is there, though muffled. “Dean!”

            “ _Cas!_ ” and this time, the voice is right beside him.

            “Dean.” Castiel buries his face in Dean’s neck, while clouds shaped like wolves nudge at his heels and lift him to a cradle made of stars.

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean lowers Castiel gently to the ground, swearing all the while. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and bites his lip to keep from screaming.

            “Cas, you gotta get up,” he insists. There are monsters hot on their trail, and it won’t be long before they catch up.

            “Dean,” Castiel murmurs, his tone blissful and light. “Dean, the water’s nice this time of year. Care to join me?”

            Dean answers by striking a nearby tree until his knuckles bleed.

ﭷ

_Sam_

Inias returns after a few hours, and Sam is ready with an apology on the tip of his tongue. Inias, however, holds up a conciliatory hand.

            “Sam, I understand. You don’t need to ask for forgiveness.”

            After a pause, Sam nods jerkily. “Thanks, Inias.”

            “It’s forgotten. Any change?”

            “Cas is getting worse.”

            Inias moves to Castiel’s side, pressing glowing fingers against the side of the former angel’s head. “It’s… hard to read. It’s chaotic in there.” He looks up and meets Sam’s gaze. “My guess would be that the virus is reaching its end stage. Taking his mind apart, molecule by molecule.”

            Sam swallows hard. “What does that mean for him and Dean?”

            Inias’ face is troubled. “It means they have to hurry,” he says, and hesitates before adding, “I did catch a very clear glimpse of Dean. I think that… whatever is happening to Castiel, Dean is his anchor. This is a good thing. As long as Dean is there to help, Castiel may not be completely lost.”

ﭷ

_Dean_

By the time Castiel has returned to semi-normal, both of Dean’s hands of scraped raw. Castiel is shivering, and it is just then that Dean realizes he’s still shirtless from the fever treatment. Dean lends him his jacket and ignores his own shivering.

            “Sorry,” Castiel says at last, and Dean glances at him sharply.

            “For what?”

            “For yelling at you yesterday. At least, I think it was yesterday. Time works strangely here, doesn’t it? It’s almost like something out of _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_. I keep looking at the trees, wondering if perhaps the Cheshire cat will appear. Or that maybe we’ll find ourselves at a tea party with the Mad Hatter. Or – ”

            “Cas,” Dean interrupts. “It’s okay. I yelled at you, too.”

            Castiel looks at him imploringly. “You were right to. I’m not used to being human. To bleeding, or sweating, or… running. I keep trying to fly. Flying is a most marvelous thing, Dean. When I take you with me, you can’t feel it. It lasts a quarter of a second to you. But to angels… it can be hours, days, years… you can lose yourself in the stardust if you’re not careful. But it’s so beautiful. You can see… _everything,_ Dean. Every cell. The whole universe pulsing with breath. And not just one time stream, either – millions of layers, of possible futures, of highways to the past.”

            “Sounds great, Cas. Keep walking.”

            “Do you know what the ability to walk on two legs is called, Dean?” Castiel asks. Dean shrugs, and Castiel smiles. “Bipedalism. Not all of your ancestors had such a trait. Bipedalism is one of the reasons your species survived, you know. Once they evolved to walk on two legs rather than four, they began to change in other ways. Skull structure and brain capacity, mostly. This allowed greater behavioral flexibility to adapt to different environmental circumstances, including the ability to manufacture more complex tools, construct sturdier shelters, and – of course – the discovery of fire and its many uses.”

            Dean doesn’t respond.

            “Humans are wonderful creations, aren’t they?”

            “Not really,” Dean snaps out at last. “We’re bloodthirsty and selfish and not very good at getting along. We hate people for hating people. We start wars and kill and steal to get what we want, and if we do, it’s still not enough. We destroy the planet and blame everything but ourselves. We are not _wonderful creations_ , Cas. More like God’s science experiment gone wrong.”

            Castiel stares at Dean curiously. “Mother Teresa.”

            “Excuse me?”

            “Mother Teresa. She dedicated her life to serving the unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. She and her sisters of the Missionaries of Charity helped the destitute living in the slums of Kolkata and – ”

            “Yeah, I know what Mother Teresa did. What are you saying?”

            Castiel smiles at the ground before answering. “Mother Teresa. Martin Luther King, Jr. Eleanor Roosevelt. Princess Diana. Mahatma Gandhi. You and Sam. You’ve saved countless lives. The world is not only full of the bad, Dean. There is good and bad in everything. Otherwise, nothing would be very exciting, would it?”

            Dean doesn’t quite know how to respond to that, so he lapses into silence. Castiel’s wordskeep bouncing around his head. They set Lucifer loose and damn near annihilated half the planet – where the hell was the good in that? _You and Sam._ Memories flash by in rapid succession; burning bones before their owner tries to hurt again, jumping into a lake to save a drowning boy. _You’ve saved countless lives._

And maybe Dean feels a glimmer of pride.

            ﭷ

_Sam_

A furious knocking at the door draws Sam out of the difficult task of feeding Dean and Castiel. Maia bursts in without a second warning, hair flying. Tyler is right on her heels.

            “Do you know what I just heard?” she blurts out. Sam shakes his head, completely bewildered. “Sarah’s patrol found a corpse. A _recent_ corpse. A few hours old. On King Street.”

            Sam’s gaze shifts to Tyler, who is looking increasingly apologetic for Maia’s behavior.

            “ _King Street,_ Samuel Winchester,” Maia spits through gritted teeth. “Do you remember when the last patrol to pass through King Street went out?”

            Sam opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. “Two days ago, wasn’t it?”

            Maia laughs bitterly. “Might’ve been, if you’d remembered to organize it. We could’ve found the poor girl and helped her before it was too late. But hey, I guess spoon-feeding your brother and his useless pet is more important than that, right?”

            “Sam, I’m sorry,” Tyler cuts in before either of the two can get another word in. “She’s not thinking straight, it’s just that – ”

            “Stop making _excuses_ for me, Ty!” Maia shouts. “I said what I meant and I meant what I said, and it’s that little Sammy here doesn’t know how to do _shit_ unless his older bro is here to pick up the slack.”

            Sam’s face is white, his lips a thin line. He stands, ignoring Tyler’s plea to stop, and stares directly at Maia without fear. “Then leave, Maia. I’m not asking you to be here, and you don’t want to stay. If I’m so incompetent, let’s see how long you last out there on your own. Let’s see if you can find a way to eat through your gas mask. Or maybe you’ll be lucky, and get killed by coyotes before you starve to death.”

            Maia says nothing, but her eyes flicker and the blood drains from her cheeks. After a few lengthy moments of tense silence, she turns on her heel and stalks out of the room. Sam can hear her slam her door shut a couple of seconds later. Tyler hovers at the doorway, a grimace on his face.

            “I’m real sorry, Sam,” he sighs. “I tried to stop her, I swear I did.”

            “I believe you.” Sam sits again, and resumes feeding Dean.

            Tyler nods, looking over his shoulder nervously. “Listen, I’ll try to get her to apologize or something, it was totally uncalled for, I – ”

            “She won’t,” Sam smirks wearily. “Don’t worry about it, Tyler. I get why she said it. I can’t force her to change her mind.”

            Tyler stands there for a little while longer. Finally, he starts to leave.

            “Tyler,” Sam calls, and the other man stalls. “You could do better.”

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean and Castiel hike in zigzags and irregular paths until they’re sure that the monsters are no longer on their trail. As they walk, Dean fills Castiel in on everything he’d learned from Inias.

            “Into the sea?” Castiel asks. For some reason, the thought fills him with dread.

            “Yeah, I don’t get it either. I mean, why should it matter where we get picked up? Whatever, I guess, as long as we can board the angel airlines and get the hell out of here.” Dean tracks their direction using the trees and points to their left. “Ocean’s to the west. Let’s get going.”

            ﭷ

            They spend an enormous amount of time walking. Dean begins to carve notches in every other tree they pass to make sure they’re not going in circles. He and Castiel fall into a comfortable quiet. Maybe they walk close together. Maybe their arms brush occasionally. Maybe neither of them say a single thing about it.

            It’s a relief when the woods become sparser and sparser, and the dirt and leaves turn to sand and rocks. They emerge at last from the forest. The sea laps gently here, the current soothed by the gentle curving of cliffs that create a sheltered bay. The sun sparkles on the muted blue waves – if Dean weren’t oh so painfully aware of their situation, he might call it beautiful.

            “Okay, buddy,” he breathes, tilting his face to grin at Castiel. “Let’s go home.”


	9. Chapter Nine

_Through this church birthed of blood and muscle where every move_

_Our arms take, every breath we swallow is worship_

_Bend with me._

_– Anis Mogjani,_ “Come Closer”

_Castiel_

Here follow the first words, the first eloquence:

            Before, there was nothing but sky and sea. Each whispering kisses across the other’s lips. Each sharing lovingly in their blueness. They told stories all day and painted all night. It was difficult for them to understand each other well – Sky was light, delicate, free, as breezy and fleeting as the wind she breathed. Sea was quieter, more reserved, a controlled king.

            Sky soon grew weary of the repetition, and fashioned herself a creature that could share in her delights. She named him Bird. When Bird shed his feathers, they fell to Sea. He held them in his hands and submerged them in his waters. They turned to rubber in his grasp, to beings with fins and smooth skin. He smiled, for he thought he had found his friends, as Sky had Bird. He named them Fish and Dolphin and Whale.

            But the three were unhappy with Sea. They envied Bird, who flew above them day and night. Fish, Dolphin, and Whale tried time and time again to reach the sky, leaping from Sea’s hands when they thought he wasn’t watching. Sea grew bitter. One day, in a fit of anger, he grabbed Bird right from Sky’s grasp and drowned him. Sky screamed and cried and struck Sea in rage.

            Underneath the water, Bird’s feathers slipped from his body. He turned naked and silky. His wings remained, for he held them to him tightly. He waited until he had gathered his strength, and at last burst from Sea with his wings turned black from the darkness that he had escaped. His eyes were as blue as his mistress, Sky, was.

            Sky laughed in relief and took Bird back to her. “You are Bird no longer,” she told him, and her smile was the sun. “You, my sweet, are Angel now.”

            Angel smiled back at Sky, and his became the moon. “As you wish, so it will be, my lady.”

            Sky gently stroked his hair. It was as black as his wings. “Angel, I have a warning for you.  Be careful around Sea. He is not your friend. I will always be open for you. But Sea will never release you from his depths again, if he manages to catch you. Do not trust him. _Do not trust the Sea._ ”

ﭷ

            The sea is a sapphire, all sharp angles and glimmering luster. To Castiel, it looks cold as ice. There is a darkness to it that laughs seductively at him, and shapely figures dance in its wake. Under the splashing of waves, he hears a creaking like a giant metal monster come alive.

            “Come on,” Dean prompts, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him to the ocean.

            Castiel resists.

            Dean stops, confused. “Cas? Come on, we gotta get in. Inias can’t get us back if we don’t.”

            “Can’t you see it, Dean?” Castiel breathes, as pitch-colored tendrils rise like smoky vines from the water. _How many, how many._ Countless. Curling like fingers. Beckoning.

            Castiel’s throat feels like he’s swallowed thorns. Their barbs stick on his tongue and his teeth turn to sand. His heart throbs low in his stomach.

            “Cas? See what? Are you okay?” Dean’s voice climbs in worry, echoing, echoing.

            A crackling sound behind them makes them turn. Slowly, so slowly. Castiel’s limbs fill with lead and he swims in syrup. Lining the forest, still as statues, an army of beasts. Their bloodied eyes glint in threatening rows. Hundreds of them, and all staring straight at Dean and Castiel.

            _If this were one of Dean’s movies, there would be war music playing right about now._

Dramatic crescendos swing in loops through Castiel’s head, but outside there is no sound. Only a stifling, pungent silence.

            _Well?_ the sea crows in his ears. _Your move._

ﭷ

_Sam_

Too long. They’ve been unconscious too long. Sam’s resolve is breaking. He can feel it shatter in his chest and send broken glass flying inside his body.

            “This can’t be normal, Inias, it _can’t_ be. Two weeks should be more than enough time to get out of that place. Something has to have gone wrong,” he insists savagely. 

            Inias doesn’t even deign to look up from the papers in front of him. He’s scanning Sam’s dissertation on the virus, adding the occasional note or question to it. “Sam, I told you. These aren’t exactly predictable circumstances, but as I said before, time works differently in the mind. For all we know, Dean’s only been there a day.”

            “Yeah, or for all we know, he’s been there a month!”

            “Sam,” Inias’ tone is sharp. “You’re not doing yourself any good by worrying about this. Dean and Castiel are fine. We’d be having much more problems with their corporeal bodies if they weren’t. You need to focus on the more pressing problems at hand. You must control your soldiers.”

            As if Inias’ words have called him, Jack bursts into the room. Sam is on his feet at once.

            One word.

            “Maia.”

ﭷ

_Maia_

            She convulses. Once, then nothing. White foam at the corners of her lips. Dark hair flying. By her side, a man gripping her hand with his. She digs crescent moons into his palms, but he sits still.

            She can feel the disease in her veins. It is acid. Lava. It bubbles in her heart and boils her brain.

            The door opens and closes. Shadows on her face, voices in her ears.

            “Stupid, so stupid. What was she thinking?”

            She knows the sound, and it lights a fire in her. If she could only focus – but there are stars in her eyes. She keeps her gaze on the man next to her. The features she knows so well. The little bump at the end of his nose that he hates but she loves. The flecks of gold hidden in his brown eyes. She can hear his heartbeat pumping in tandem with hers.

            “She decided to take you up on your offer, Sam.” A lilting voice, hinting at a drawl. _Alabama born and raised,_ he’d declared proudly when she’d laughed at it. _What are you gigglin’ at, Ohio girl?_ He’d pronounced it like O- _hah­_ -o.

            Quiet. So quiet. A fly clamoring at the windowsill, turned rabid by the scent of corrupted flesh.

            “I’m sorry.”

            _Sorry, sorry, sorry. Sam, I’m sorry. She’s not thinking straight, it’s just that –_

Tyler. She writes his name in the dust, carves it on her ribs.

            _Sorry. Tyler, I’m so sorry._

ﭷ

_Sam_

Regret lumps like coal in Sam’s chest. Maia doesn’t move, apart from the occasional shiver. He remembers a slight, red-haired girl, and a fist closes around his heart. _This is my fault_ , he thinks with a pang. _I’m the one who drove her off._

            “It’s not too late,” he tells Tyler. “We’ll restrain her until Dean and Cas come back. Then we’ll find a way to fix her.”

            Tyler looks up at him with deadened eyes. There’s a disturbing mixture of defeat and desperation warring for attention in their depths. A freight train crashes into Sam’s chest. _That’s what Dean looked like when we found Cas._ “It’s too late, Sam.”

            Sam shakes his head. “No. We can keep her alive.”

            A bottle drops into Sam’s hand. A clink of glass with death at its rim. “We have no idea where she found it.”

            “Poison?” The word is an ice pick, and it shatters the air. “She’s already…”

            _A lost cause. Too far gone._ The thoughts lick at his tongue. He doesn’t speak them. He doesn’t need to. Tyler says them for him.

            “As good as dead.”

ﭷ

_Castiel_

_A fronte praecipitium, a tergo lupi._ The words slide around in Castiel’s mind.

            A precipice in front. Wolves behind.

Dean’s grip is deathly strong on his. Castiel doesn’t mind, even when his bones begin to strike a protest. The monsters don’t even seem to breathe, immobile as they are. They have their heads drawn high, poised like the Terracotta warriors of old. From deep within the forest, fog begins to gather in rolling towers. A fork of lightning splits the sky, and its thunder sounds like breaking bones.

            Castiel hears Dean hiss a curse. They look up together and face the storm-black sky. The clouds, pregnant with rain and threatening to fracture at the slightest touch, churn warningly above them. They stretch into twisted grins, smiling clownishly at the two from above.

            “Cas, let’s go,” Dean whispers, tugging urgently on Castiel’s sleeve. “We gotta get out of here.”

            _Cas-ti-el, do you dare?_ An exhale through his mind, powerful enough to move mountains.

            With an angry splinter of sound, the eggshell of clouds cracks open and spills its screaming, blistering yoke on them all.

ﭷ

_Maia_

A warm squeeze on her cold, callused hand. Fingers laced through hers like a basket’s weave. They draw her from her misty sleep in a light, happy way.

            She can’t gather her thoughts. They float away wearing scales and fishtails. The bubbles they breathe pop, and she hears the laughter caught in them. _Come back!_ she calls, but it’s useless. She always gets just close enough to touch and they whip away again.

            He – Tyler, she reminds herself – has not left her side. There are whiskers on his face, black as the marks underneath his eyes. _Shave your beard, Ty, you look homeless,_ she remembers, and _It’s the end of the world, no one’s gonna judge me for a little scruff._

Under her skin, she can feel her cells weeping as the arsenic seeps through them and breaks them down. _To keep away the rats_ , she’d thought when she found the bottles in the storage room of the bar. Now the poison has become the rat, sneaking into her bloodstream and gnawing at her heart with ravenous intensity.

            A heavy weight on one of her left fingers. A question Tyler had never asked, a story Maia had never told. Another smile. Another man. Searing stomach pain, and blood on their sheets. A crib burned in their yard. A sore separation, and still she’d kept the ring.

            _Julia,_ the name spells itself out on the backs of her eyelids. _Your name would have been Julia._

Late-term miscarriage was what the obstetrician had said. _I can’t be around you anymore_ was what her husband had said. She can’t find the strength to dig up his name or his face.

            “Maia,” she hears, and his voice stirs a delicate flutter in her chest. “I know… I know you probably can’t hear me, but… god, I love you. I love you so much.”

            _Love._ Yes. This must be love, for it is pain.

            It is claws to the heart and gravel to the eyes. It is the drip of water on a thirsty man’s tongue. It is the sensation of being hollowed out and left with nothing but emptiness.

            It is breathlessness; the same as a blow to the lung. It is both a whip carving canyons in the flesh and a feather brushing lightly ’cross the cheek. It is both relinquishing control and a steady hand on the reins. It is both silken touch and jagged blade.

            It is the same feeling as observing the stars in the middle of nowhere, or diving underwater with a tank low on oxygen. It is pain, and it is love.

            In the back of her mind, she pictures green eyes meeting blue ones.

            The image is lost on her.

            She prefers those with the flecks of gold.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel cries out as the rain turns his skin to hot wax. Dean abandons all pretexts and wraps his arms around the other man, hauling him back. Castiel struggles and wails. The rain is burning his skin to the bone. Castiel has a wild vision of turning into one of the monsters with their charred flesh and screams until his voice breaks.

            The monsters move in a single fluid motion that is so synchronized it’s almost robotic. The deluge pounds the men and creatures both, soaking them, but the sea greedily swallows the drops.

            _Cas-ti-el, watch yourself,_ it warns as Castiel slips on the rocks and falls into Dean’s grasp.

            “ _No!_ ” Castiel shrieks, when he sees that Dean is trying to drag them into the water. Dean shouts something in return, but Castiel is strong, and he fights back.

            They are being herded up one of the bluffs of the bay; dimly, Castiel realizes it’s the one he fell off before – was it only days ago? Ahead of them, the rock face drops off into a steep cliff. The monsters click their teeth and grin at him – _go ahead,_ they say. _Make your choice._

 _Sheep,_ Castiel thinks as they are pushed slowly up the hill, and absurdly imagines him and Dean dressed in cotton candy wool.

            “ _Cas,_ damn it, get into the water!” Dean’s tone is a scared kind of angry; a frozen river with an icy surface so thin it would shatter at the slightest shift in weight. Castiel is standing on that icy surface. He takes a step and plummets into the freezing rapids below.

            One of the monsters steps forward. It runs its tongue over the remnants of its lips as if tasting a succulent steak. With one clawed hand, it beckons slowly to him.

            _Cas-ti-el, better choose well,_ the sea laughs. The sloshing waves below give off a revolting salty smell that clings to the air like smoke. Castiel attempts to loosen Dean’s grip on his body, digs his fingers under Dean’s own and pries them off him.

            Castiel is screaming, even as he dodges Dean’s outstretched arms and walks into the monster’s embrace.

ﭷ

_Maia_

The blood in her mouth tastes like copper.

            She remembers closing her teeth around an old, filthy coin, testing it. _Fuck, Tyler. This is real._ She remembers _I told you! Thought you’d like it. It’s just a penny. I think._

            Oh, the flood of happiness she had felt, holding that disgusting piece of metal and staring at that dorky little grin. _Thanks, Ty. I love it._

She feels its weight on her chest now, nestled snugly in the hollow between her collarbones. Tyler had used a nail to hammer a hole through the top and an old shoelace to turn it into a necklace. She hasn’t taken it off ever since.

            A trail of moisture leaks down her cheek. His careful touch brushes it away.

            _“Where are we going?” she laughs. His grip is tight and warm on hers. He pulls her toward a little park, a tiny little thing. She stumbles over a twig, and he catches her. It is midnight, and the moon’s pockmarked face shines down on them from above._

_“It’s a surprise!” he answers. They reach the middle of the park, where a ring of rocks waits for them. It circles a tent of logs._

_“What is this, Tyler?” she asks when they skid to a stop by the pit. He smiles at her and kneels beside it, removing a small cardboard tube from his pocket._

_“I found a road flare, down in storage. Look, I did this in school once.” With a pocketknife, he carefully cuts a slit in the tube and sprinkles powder over the logs. Then he takes out a lighter, and sets the whole thing on fire._

_“Oh…” is all that she can say. The fire is a brilliant, unnatural red, sparks flying, so bright it makes her eyes water. She can’t stop looking at it. She can feel its warmth from where she stands, seeping through skin and muscle and bone to her very soul. She takes a deep breath, relishing the fresh air that fills her lungs.  The fire throws its embers into the inky sky. They get stuck up there, and turn to twinkling stars._

_“Funny, ain’t it? How pretty fire can be when we’re not burnin’ bodies on it?” he jokes. She elbows him. “Yeah, yeah, sorry.”_

_“No, you’re right,” she amends, and leans into him when he wraps his arms around her from behind._

_There they stand, until the fire wilts and dies, until the sky turns pastel with the rising sun._

She remembers the warmth of that night, the warmth of the flames and of Tyler’s embrace.

            But now, she just feels cold. She squeezes her fingers around the icicle in her heart. _Take me_ , she whispers. _I’m frozen, so cold. There’s an ice age in my chest. Watch it turn my fingernails to snow. Watch it turn my eyes to dust and teeth to rain._

 _What I wouldn’t give,_ she thinks, _for another night out by that fire._

A doorway ahead of her, shrouded by darkness. She approaches it. Is about to touch it when a hand yanks her back.

            Those gold-flecked eyes. _Stay,_ they beg. _Stay with me._

 _I have to go,_ she tells them. _I have to._ She touches his face with her nothingness, smiles at him. She falls back into the darkness, and it parts behind her, receiving her, wholly and completely.

            Tyler feels her grasp on his hand weaken. It tenses around his once more, and falls limp.

            He bows his head, gathering her in his arms one last time. Listens to the final few echoes of her life.

            _Thump. Thump._

Silence.

ﭷ

_Dean_

_They’re gonna rip him apart. Dear God, they’re gonna rip him apart._

It’s not until he hears the tear of fabric that Dean lurches into action.

            The monsters try to stop him, but Dean is bursting with fear and ferocity, and he knocks them all out of his way. They destroy each other on their way to him. One claw catches him in the temple, and he cries out in pain. Another slices at his ribs. Dean’s hand closes around Castiel’s jacket. The other man has a bleeding nick on his collarbone, but seems otherwise unharmed.

            “Cas, oh God,” Dean says, nearly slipping in the mud. The rain is a blinding, freezing torrent. Dean can’t even gather the strength to shiver. “Cas, come on, man. Don’t do this. Getting into that water’s the only way we can get home, don’t you understand that?”

            “Dean.” Castiel smiles placidly at him. “Dean, you are so beautifully _human._ ”

            Dean has no time to respond. One of the monsters runs up behind Castiel and lashes out. In a flash, Dean grabs Castiel and hauls him out of the warzone, out of the carnage.

 

_Castiel_

Castiel spills into Dean’s arms. He breathes in the body around him, knocks their foreheads together with as much gentleness as he can muster. “ _Numera stellas volui, sed tibi scripta galaxia in oculis vestris,_ ” he whispers, tracing his finger over the constellations on Dean’s face. _I tried to count the stars, but the galaxy was written in your eyes._ For a moment, he is lost. _I chart our heart lines across thousands and thousands of maps. You are my compass, you are my sail, you are the only road worth taking._

The sea roars behind them, opening its gaping maw like a lion’s, shaking out its mane on the rocks. _Do not trust the Sea,_ that ancient tale reminds him. _Sea will never release you from his clutches again, if he manages to catch you._

“ _Cas!_ ” Dean shouts, and his raspy voice sets Castiel alight. “ _No more messing around, we gotta go!_ ”

            Castiel tastes the rain that licks its way across his skin. _Sky is weeping for me_ , he thinks. “Do not despair, my lady!” he calls aloud, lifting his head to send his moonlight smile at the sky. “Sea will not capture us today!” 

            ﭷ

_Dean_

The entire way back up the cliff is a struggle. Castiel snaps out of his dazed, cheerful trance as soon as they begin the rise, and starts to wail. Dean blocks out all of what Castiel is saying. He can’t take it anymore. He can’t take the rain, the monsters, the cold. He can’t take any of it.

            He grabs Castiel by the hand and pulls him further up the cliff until they’re standing right on the edge. Castiel kicks out at him, nearly breaking Dean’s wrist.

            There are screams, and flying fists, and Dean has to keep a death grip on Castiel’s arm for fear of losing his balance and falling off alone.

            “ _Sky told me not to, she said not to trust the Sea!_ ” Castiel shrieks. “ _No, I can’t, Dean, I can’t!_ ”

            Dean catches Castiel’s face in his hands, forcing the other man to look at him with those blue eyes that speak of such wonder and enchantment, of millennia passed. They spin tales of creation and infinity, twisting with blue fire so strong that Dean can feel the burn across his chest. He is screaming, but on his tongue are stories so long left unspoken, and languages that can roll and growl and dance all at once. Dean has never been so struck as he is in that moment – he feels it like a bolt of lightning, rattling his teeth and loosening his ribs from his skeleton.

            In that distinct second, Dean feels like flying.

            _“Leave me! Leave me here!”_

He does not think. He does not breathe. He huffs a ragged, “I’m not leaving here without you, Cas.” He pulls Castiel’s face to his and swallows the other man’s shrieks.

            There is no sound. The monsters have ceased their fighting. Dean thinks even the sea has stopped its tide. The rain continues to fall, but it’s sweet as honey as it trickles into their joined lips. Dean’s head is nothing but white noise. Castiel’s hand comes up to grab Dean’s wrist.

            Dean grabs onto Castiel with all the strength he has. He takes a step back.

            They fall off the edge of the cliff together, locked creatures, one being shared by two bodies. The blackened, churning sea rises hungrily up to meet them, and they plunge full-fathom-five into its cold, wet, laughing mouth.


	10. Chapter Ten

_When he hath tried me,_

_I shall come forth as gold._

– Job 23:10

 

_Inias_

“It’s time.”

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Clarity. That’s what Dean’s touch brings him.

            It draws the poison from his pores, seeping away in milky wisps of fog.

            In the brief, stomach-twisting, heart-pounding seconds of freefall, Castiel loses himself in the sugar lilac taste of Dean’s lips.

            Then they hit the water, and it draws them in with its silken fingers. Castiel is already so breathless that he hardly notices the difference, even when Dean’s body bucks up into him from the force of the waves. The bubbles that Dean exhales say hello as they pass, smooth beads sliding across his cheeks.

            They’re sinking, Castiel realizes. He feels no fear.

            By the time he and Dean pull apart, they are surrounded by dark blue sea. Truly lost within its depths. It could’ve been seconds since they fell. It could’ve been centuries. It’s not until Dean grins at him and blows more bubbles at his face that Castiel realizes that air is not so necessary down here. They’re not breathing, because they don’t need to. The warm pressure in Castiel’s chest is comforting rather than terrifying.

            Castiel touches his hand lightly to Dean’s face, and other man’s grin fades into a shy smile. There’s so many things Castiel would say, if he could even speak, but he can’t summon them to mind.

            Instead, Castiel looks down. That’s when he sees the lights.

ﭷ

_Sam_

“Are you sure?” Sam asks worriedly. Inias shoots him a look of exasperated fondness.

            “Sam, I do know what I’m doing. Castiel is ready to return. Dean, too,” he adds, before Sam can even open his mouth.

            Sam purses his lips and nods tensely, an expression of surrender. Inias settles bird-like on Castiel’s side of the bed, folding his long legs under him. He places one hand on Castiel’s chest and one on Dean’s.

            “ _Ol umd gi, esiasch_ ,” he starts, and the chant sounds like a sweet, sweet melody. “ _Ol farzm gi, esiasch._ _Nor l aoiveae sa congamphlgh, ol zamran nonca. Niis salman._ ”

            A breath of words, harboring the strength of a thunderstorm. They hover heavily in the room. _I call you, brothers. I raise you, brothers. Son of stars and spirit of man, I sing to you. Come home._ Dean and Castiel breathe them in and out and in again, until they are so full that Sam is sure their veins are running with grace instead of blood.

            As he watches, Castiel begins to glow. The radiance is that of nothing that Sam has ever seen before: a silver-blue, almost white luminosity that stretches and reaches up and expands and spreads its hands in Castiel’s chest.

            Inias’ eyelids flutter shut, a soft sigh slipping from parted lips.

            “Can you feel it, Sam?” he whispers. “Can you hear it?”

            And indeed, he can – Sam senses the aching hum of power, starting at his feet, moving up through his spine and shoulders. It pulls at the crevices of his heart, patches them up. It is euphoria; Sam feels wild and windblown. He feels _flight._

            “What is it?” he says at last – he is almost too afraid to ask.

            “ _Ti a gevamna,_ ” Inias answers. His eyes turn to light. His smile shines nearly as bright. “It is the beginning.”

            ﭷ

_Dean_

The lights rush up suddenly, without warning, and pour into Castiel’s mouth.

            Castiel gulps them down, and they shake inside of him, streaming from his body. All around them, the sea begins to boil. The color of Castiel’s eyes turns from blue to white. His body spasms once. Then they unfurl, twin tornadoes of stardust. No longer shadows thrown haphazardly on walls. Ethereal, smoldering, magnificent. The wings of an angel reborn.

            Dean remembers the way he used to feel the few times he and Sam went stargazing. Tiny. Insignificant. Heavy with the weight of the world and all the promises winking at them from the mouth of the universe. But _alive_ , and _breathing_ , and _there_. He supposes he’s still stargazing, in some way or another – the fire that lights glory and grace in Castiel’s eyes stirs that passionate hunger in Dean’s chest once more.

In that moment, Dean disappears. He is everywhere and nowhere and he is filled fit to burst with air and awe and longing for something so strange and so familiar all at once. He remembers the time he and Sam caught a glimpse of the galaxy. Like fireflies in cigarette smoke, he had thought at the time. He had also thought it might’ve been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and that maybe the stained motel rooms and grubby diner food were worth it, knowing just what else this life had to offer.

He sees the same thing in Castiel now. The catch of aether, the flow that rumbles and shakes Dean to his core. There is a singing buzz beneath his skin, and wonder explodes so heatedly within him that it strains his breath.

Dean remembers learning that stars can be seen from Earth long after they have died, because it takes millions of years for the image of their death to reach us. He remembers thinking that it seemed to him that stars were immortal then. That they would always be there – even when they weren’t. He never really could tell whether that was the saddest thing he’d ever heard or the most hopeful.

Castiel is no star. He is no galaxy. He is a supernova. A raging burst of nebulae and blinding light, with the power to rip a hole right through the heavens and yank out the wiring.

And he knocks Dean breathless.

ﭷ

Wrapped so closely in each other, Dean can feel the pure power in Castiel’s wings. _Lightning in a bottle_ , he thinks, when he sees that the feathers are arcs of raw, crackling flame.

They hear the call together, he and Castiel. There, drifting together in the ocean’s wintry arms.

 _Come home_ , it says, and they do.

Castiel moves his wings, laughing silently when they pull him upwards. He extends a hand to Dean, who grabs it with a beaming smile, and Castiel pumps his wings again and again. They are propelled towards the surface, holding each other, sewn together at their seams.

Just before they break the waves, they wake.

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel’s first gasping breath is that of a drowning man. Next to him, he hears its echo heave from Dean’s mouth. Strobe lights dance against the backs of his eyelids, comets and fireworks on a dark red canvas. _Different_ , he thinks. _Everything is different._

His skin feels anesthetized; the scratchy quilt on his neck, the warm cotton of his shirt, even the line where his arm meets Dean’s, buzzing with a concentrated _something._ Castiel’s mind is sluggish to catch up, but he feels it, hiding just out of reach.

            “It worked,” he hears, a voice on the far side of a tunnel.      

            Castiel is busy relishing in the new feeling pounding through his bloodstream, and he realizes with a start what it is. The simmering, liquid grace that he hasn’t felt in so long – he’d almost forgotten what it was like. He opens his eyes only when Dean throws his arms around him.

            “We made it,” Dean murmurs in his ear. “We actually made it.”

            Castiel doesn’t answer right away, only laces two fingers with Dean’s and slowly sits up. Dean brings their joined hands to his lips, before realizing with a red-faced start that they have an audience.

             Sam helps Dean from the bed and they clap each other’s backs, both nearly in tears and streaming hysterical laughter. Castiel rises with less ceremony, rocking on his atrophied leg muscles. Inias steadies him, and there is wonder in the other angel’s eyes.

            “Is it really back?” Inias asks, hardly daring to believe.

            Castiel holds up one hand, where the veins just under the skin of his palm glow faintly. It is answer enough. Inias inhales sharply.

            “How?” he pushes. “You were cut off, the Host made sure of it, you were – ”

            “Practically powerless,” Castiel supplies matter-of-factly.

            Inias ducks his head. “I believed that, at best, you’d be able to recover your wings. This, what you have, it’s – Castiel, I never expected…”

            “Neither did I,” Castiel answers, flexing his fists. The sensation is strange – a superficial weakness, hiding the pulsing magma that fills him up within. He feels the power of his grace as pins and needles on his fingertips and at the base of his skull.

            Dean comes up behind him, brushing gentle fingers across Castiel’s spine. Castiel swoons under the exquisite shiver that Dean’s touch calls forward, a delightful awareness that drowns out any other thought of grace and splendor.

            Sam joins them, lips curling upward and eyes making an obvious effort to ignore Dean and Castiel’s close proximity. He makes a joke under his breath, something about _touched by an angel_ , and Dean kicks out at him.

            _Home_ , Castiel thinks. He is clean, he is saved. He twists his hand back, steadying himself with Dean’s warm fingers around his. _We’re home. We’re really home._

ﭷ

**ONE WEEK LATER**

            Eleven clumsily carved slashes on a block of gray stone. Four letters. One word.

            _Lucy_.

            Castiel sits alone by the grave, knees pulled up his chest. He runs a hand over the rough rock. There is nothing beneath it, of course. Lucy had been cremated, like all the rest. He hadn’t even held on long enough to make it to her funeral.

            He remembers a girl, with hair as red as the fire that consumed her. He remembers the determination in her eyes, her sparkle and her smile. What a lovely thing she’d been, so full of hope and trust. _Lucy_ , he thinks. The name means ‘light’, and how appropriate indeed.

            Her memory is a permanent ache in his chest, a throbbing pain in his temple. Castiel doesn’t think he’ll ever cease to blame himself for her death. _Maybe if you hadn’t screwed up so damn bad, I wouldn’t’ve died._ The words chase each other in circles around his head. But so do Dean’s.

            _Find somethin’ to live for. That’s how you cope._ Castiel remembers Dean’s lips on his, the easiness of their touch, the comfort. He digs his nails deep into the ground. _You gotta turn it into somethin’ that matters._

            Castiel looks at the sky; the real sky, a thousand times brighter and more beautiful than any he could have imagined. A lone cloud drifts lazily across the breadth of blue. Castiel imagines Lucy standing on top of it, reigning from her castle on high, with a crown of sunlight and a dandelion necklace.

            _I’m king of the world!_ she would shriek in glee, and Castiel would correct her by reminding her that she’d be a queen, not a king. _But yes, you’d rule the world. You’d rule it all._

            “I’m sorry,” Castiel whispers to her grave. “I’m so sorry, Lucy. I promised to protect you, and I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. I failed you, and I’m sorry. I – I hope you’re happier now than you were. I hope you’re with your family. I just wish – ” Castiel hiccups over a sob. “I just wish we could’ve said goodbye.”

            _Stop bein’ such a sap, Cassie,_ he pictures her saying. _Tell me the good stuff._

Castiel leans his head against the stone. He wonders where to begin, where he could even start to string together the recent events into sensible language. _I lost myself when you left, Lucy. I went to such a horrible place, and you were there, but it wasn’t you, Lucy. And then Dean was there, and he found me, Lucy. God, that man, he saved me._

            “Dean and I made it out of that awful place. Lucy, I – I don’t think I could’ve done it by myself. You should’ve seen me, you – you would’ve laughed, I was – ” _A cock-crazy mess._ “But we got out. And I think – I think we’re going to be okay. Dean and I, I mean. We haven’t – well, we haven’t really talked about it, but I don’t think we need to. I can’t explain it. There’s just something – ” He pauses, wishing to God that he could speak what was on his mind. “We’re going to be okay.”

            Castiel stays there for hours. He watches Lucy’s cloud disappear beyond the horizon and waves goodbye. At one point, he manages to drift off, and wakes to a hand on his shoulder. Dean is there, and he doesn’t have to say a word. Castiel accepts his outstretched hand and stands, dusting himself off. They turn together and walk together.

            “How’d you know?” Castiel asks, after a while.

            Dean shrugs, sticks his hands in his pockets. “Where else would you be?”

            “I miss her,” Castiel says very suddenly, coming to an abrupt stop.

            Dean is quiet. He puts a hand out. Slowly, Castiel slips his into the other man’s grip. And this, this is all Castiel needs. No words, no sticky Hallmark condolences. Only him and Dean, grace and soul, torn and frayed, breathing the same summer air. Their footsteps echo each other. Their heartbeats pulse from one palm to the other, back and forth and back again.

            There is no sound, but Castiel has never heard a sweeter silence.

            Castiel feels a very different sort of glow inside of him, one he suspects has nothing to do with the return of his grace. He lets it lift him in a way his wings never could. He lets it fill him up in a way that all the power in Heaven never could.

            Castiel tugs on Dean’s hand, and they slow to another stop. Castiel looks around with wide eyes, taking in the view. A storefront claiming the world’s best hamburgers. The sidewalk beneath their feet, marked with initials, dates, a child’s hand, a dog’s paw.  Everywhere, marks of humanity and its progress. All the little things, the bits of emotion, of memory, that first made Castiel fall in love with the humans.

            “What is it?” Dean’s voice is low. He’s worried, Castiel realizes with a laugh. He thinks there’s something wrong, when everything is so, _so_ right. _And, Lucy,_ he sends skyward. _We’re really going to be okay._ “Cas, what’s going on?”

            Castiel smiles. He lifts his free hand. Light has already begun to gather at his fingertips.

            “Dean, I’m going to save the world.”

ﭷ

_Dean_

“Come again?” are the first words out of Sam’s mouth. They’re directed towards Dean.

            “He wouldn’t tell me how, not until we got back here.” Dean shrugs. “So, come on, Cas. Tell us your brilliant plan.”

            Castiel grins at both of them. He’s doing little hops of excitement, and is quite literally glowing all over. Dean is less than ecstatic about whatever idea Castiel has in mind.

            “I’m going to obliterate the virus.”

            A curious feeling like static sweeps through Dean’s body. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth when he tries to speak. It takes several tries to get the right words out. “Cas, you – you can do that?”

            Sam looks as dumbstruck as Dean feels. “What?” is all he can manage.

            “I can do it,” Castiel tells them. “Dean, when we came back, I don’t know how it happened, but I was able to overcome the hold that Heaven had on my grace. I can feel it; it’s all there. And I’m stronger, somehow. Stronger than I used to be, before we even met. I can do this.”

            There’s a pit of dread in Dean’s stomach. He takes a few steps forward, placing a hand on Castiel’s wrist. “Cas,” he says. The glow dims a little. “Isn’t it dangerous? I mean, couldn’t you just completely drain yourself out again?”

            “I’m strong enough,” Castiel insists. “I know it, I know I am.”

            Sam cards a hand through his hair. “But Inias said that – ”

            “Inias is wrong,” Castiel says firmly, stubbornly. “I can do this.”

            Dean stares at him, at those angular lines and tousled black hair. He wants to argue, needs to make Castiel see that this is a terrible idea, a horrible plan, _do you understand how much could go wrong, I am so not letting you risk your life like this after all we’ve been through._ But their eyes meet, and Dean sags under the heaviness that settles over him with that look. _There’s no changing your mind, is there?_ he asks silently. _No_ , is the answer he gets.

            “Okay,” he says at last, after stretching the silence like a rubber band. “Okay.”

ﭷ

_Castiel_

            Castiel closes his eyes and seeks out his grace. It ebbs and flows under his skin, responding to his call like the tide to the moon. It rumbles and coils beneath him, quaking, bursting, warping, pulling him every which way until it centers at his heart. He hears it the same as he hears his pulse, a whisper, a song. He hums along to its heavenly melody. It builds within him until there is a towering skyscraper in his chest, stretching him out, shaking him loose.

            It lifts him off the floor, carries him with outstretched arms. Castiel burns through his restraints, sings in a voice as resonant as Gabriel’s trumpet, and sends his grace in beams to shroud the world in moonlit lace.

            He draws himself in every cardinal direction and all the areas between. He soars through the air, eyes aflame, alive and burning and raw. He finds every corrupted molecule and siphons it to purity. He blows it all to the nothingness, to the void, to die. He washes the foul taste from his mouth with the whispered _thanks, Cas_ from a green-eyed man, and finally folds himself neatly back up into his body.

ﭷ

_Dean_

Dean watches as Castiel retreats back into himself, listens to the ringing of his victory song. It strums through his ears, a beautiful, ancient march, triumph and grandeur. He sinks into the light as it brushes past him, as Castiel’s true form sweeps across his cheeks and chest, and lodges itself deep into his heart. A cry bursts from every corner of the room, every corner of the earth.

            “ _Ti gal med droux graupha,_ ”A whisper, a scream, a cheer. “ _It is done_.”

            Castiel doesn’t open his eyes until his feet touch the ground again. Their delicate blue depths are clear, dazzling, the color of a sky touched with gold. With his grace, he has driven the clouds away.

            The three of them inhale together, exhale together, push past each other in their hurry to run outside. They laugh, laugh until their sides are in stitches and tears are running down their faces, when they cross the quarantine line and suck in the clean, sparkling air.

            _This is it, this is really it,_ Dean thinks. Or maybe he says it out loud. He finds that he doesn’t particularly care. His skin feels rubbed raw, his lungs newly shaped. On the wind, he can taste budding apple blossoms and rich maple bark. He turns and buries his face in the winged collarbone of one beautiful, messy-haired angel.

            “You did it,” Dean’s voice is muffled by fabric and emotion.

            That beautiful, messy-haired angel wraps his arms around his beautiful, green-eyed man. “No,” he disagrees quietly. “You did. I couldn’t have done it without you. Never without you.”

ﭷ

_Castiel_

Castiel feels his approach before he hears it. A whistle, a rustle, and finally a gentle _whoosh_.

            He has known this moment was coming. He’s known it since he made his decision, since he woke up with starlight and sandstorms in his veins once more. He is ready. He steels himself and turns, keeping Dean close to him. He is met with gray eyes under heavy eyebrows and a face arranged in a mixture of reverence and dread.

            Inias.

            “Brother,” Castiel greets him.

            “What have you done, Castiel?” Inias whispers. Castiel can see his wings, shaking faintly, tucked in close to his body.

            Castiel tilts his chin up, a coy smile playing at his lips. “I helped them, Inias. I fixed their damage.”

            Inias curls his hands into nervous fists. “They will not stand for this. You know that. They will come for you, and they will punish you.”

            Castiel looks over at Dean, and back at Sam. He breathes in their fire and tends to it in his stomach. He feeds it with the memories of Lucy and Maia and Alison Marie Schroder and all of the other unclaimed innocents. He tends and feeds until it is roaring, until it licks at the inside of his throat and sends its smoke from his eyes and mouth and fingertips.

            _Telocvovim._ They gave him that name, once. _Of him that is Fallen._

 _It is not I that is Fallen, esiasch,_ he thinks. _Nor is Heaven our Kingdom, nor Earth a pest to line up for extermination. Someone once told me that if there was ever something worth fighting for – well, this was it. He was right. When I first laid a hand on the Righteous Man in Hell, I was not lost. I was saved. And I found something beautiful. So…_

Dean is there when Castiel reaches his hand out. As he always is. As he always will be.

            “So, let them come.”


End file.
